


For you have returned my soul within me

by JHSC



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Antisemitism, Brainwashing, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon is more like guidelines than actual rules, Florida, Hanukkah, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Gabe Jones, Judaism, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-01 20:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17251004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: Steve walks away from him, leads him out of the burning factory and into the surrounding forest, the air thickened by smoke and tension, and Bucky follows. He watches the newly-straightened line of Steve's back, the newly-broadened span of his shoulders, and thinks,There weren't supposed to be any more miracles when the temple fell.Maybe this one slipped through.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! Thank you to [magdaliny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdaliny) for brainstorming and screaming with me, to [Nendian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nendian) for alpha-reading and screaming with me, and to [Quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight) for beta-reading (and screaming with me). Note: This fic contains some right-aligned Hebrew script. You do not need to know any Hebrew to follow along.  
> IMPORTANT NOTE IF YOU USE AN E-READER: AO3's ebook download makes the Hebrew script in this fic go super wonky. I have done some magic with Calibre that I _think_ solves the problem: [Download the EPUB document here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IcfgoMfx-NwqMQtCXdktUDbiPu5Det9p), or [ dowload the MOBI (Kindle) document here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KOiDeS2ogM6nGbkHWX27TMRX-0DA1Wj4), or stay in the browser and hang out! If you have any issues feel free to comment or message me [on tumblr](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com). Thanks!

There is nothing new under the sun, and that includes Steve walking away from him.

Bucky takes the girls to the dance hall, promising, “Steve will catch up with us later,” a statement which makes Dot laugh and Miri roll her eyes. Bucky gives them both a smile he doesn't feel, and resolves to at least attempt enjoying his last night in New York, even without his best guy by his side.

It's an hour into their time at the dance hall, and Bucky's just managed to forget the sting of Steve's rejection and start enjoying himself, when he spots the second disappointment of the night at the far end of the dance floor.

He finishes his turn with Dot, then makes his way over to the other couple. A slower tune has just started up; Bucky taps the tall, blond GI on the shoulder and, polite as you please, asks, “Can I cut in?”

“No, you may not,” Rebecca says before her date can respond.

“I have to insist,” Bucky says, throwing a little smirk, a little swagger as he meets the eyes of a soldier a solid six years older than his teenaged sister.

Becca scowls and breaks away from her partner. Bucky gives the GI a false smile and opens his arms wide to bring Becca into the dance.

“Did you have to do that?” Becca asks, all annoyance, as they fall into the familiar steps they've been practicing in their mother’s kitchen for years. “You couldn't wait to bother me at the drinks table like a normal person?”

“Where does Ma think you are right now?” Bucky asks, leading them towards the middle of the dance floor, away from where Becca's last partner stands with his buddies.

“I told her I was going to Louise's, and I am. Later. I wanted to have some fun, first.”

“You know that fella was about six years too old for you,” Bucky points out dryly.

Becca rolls her eyes and tosses her head to dislodge a stray curl from her forehead. Ma makes the exact same gesture when she's kneading challah and her hands are covered in flour and dough. “I wasn't planning on marrying him. I wasn't even planning on giving him a second dance.”

“You gotta watch out for guys like that,” Bucky explains. “You can't just come to the dance hall alone, I'm not always going to be here to rescue you.”

“Oh, was this a rescue?” she asks, scoffing like only a fifteen-year-old can. “I thought this was you taking one last opportunity to embarrass me.”

“It can't be both?” Becca steps on his foot in retaliation, and he jumps. “Hey, I just shined these!”

“You were in a fight today, I can tell,” Becca says, squeezing his right hand a little where the knuckles are bruised from hitting that guy behind the movie theater. “Shiny shoes aren't going to impress anyone. Who did you punch?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Some guy hassling Steve. Not a big deal.”

“What's Steve going to do without you rescuing _him_ all the time?” she says. She peers across Bucky's shoulder to search the crowd for Steve's slight form. “Where is he, anyway? Holding up a wall somewhere?”

“Steve doesn't need me rescuing him, unlike _some people_ I could mention–”

She knows him too well, can read his feelings in his face no matter how much he tries to hide them, no matter how dark the dance floor. “Wait, is Steve not here? I thought you were going on another of your double dates?”

“So did I,” he says, spinning her into another turn with the music.

“Oh no,” she says as she steps back into his arms, because she knows too much about him and Steve than any of them are really comfortable with, but Becca's too damn smart to stay kept in the dark about things she knows are going on. She lowers her voice and moves closer to ask, “Did you have another spat about the dates? He knows those aren't serious, he knows you're–”

“Hey, relax,” Bucky says, interrupting her before she can get too worked up by her own imagination. Steve's been practically another brother her whole life. As a result, she's far more invested in the day-to-day whirlwind of their relationship than she has any right to be. Ma says she’ll make a fine yenta someday if she ever grows some sense. “We did not have a spat. He's off at the nearest recruitment center, like always.”

“And you say he needs less rescuing than me….”

“You're right. He needs a lot more. So you're going to have to step up and keep an eye on him for me, then, aren't you?”

Becca raises her eyebrows and wrinkles her nose, the way she does when someone offers her black liquorice. “Bucky, I am _not_ taking _your_ fella with me to the dance hall. That is a bad idea for a lot of reasons.”

“Embarrassed to be seen with him?” Bucky asks lightly, fully aware he's only been allowed this dance because he cuts a handsome figure in his uniform and no one here knows they're related. Becca's going to be mobbed the next time she steps off the floor.

“That's not it and you know it,” she shoots back, offended. “Steve is so overbearing he makes _you_ look footloose and fancy free.”

“I _am_ footloose and fancy free,” Bucky says gravely. He brings them through one final turn as the song winds down. “But I think that's the deal, Becks. If you want to sneak out after curfew, that's your business. You want me to keep quiet about it, you gotta promise to bring Steve with you next time. It'll be good for you both. You can talk about how much you'll miss me.”

“I won't miss you at all,” Becca snorts, and that's when the song ends.

Bucky, true to his word, steps away and gives her a little bow in thanks. “Thank you for the dance,” he says with a smile. “I'll walk you to Louise's at ten. Have fun till then.”

“You're terrible,” Becca complains. Then she turns, takes the nearest hand offered to her, and twirls away for another dance.

*

Dot and Miri think Bucky is the absolute _sweetest_ for not only walking them home, but then walking his kid sister to her friend's place after chaperoning her all night at the dance hall. It's too bad he won't be around for a while to use any of the social capital he's gained tonight or, more likely, try to use it to give Steve's standing a boost. Steve never even showed up after earning his sixth 4F; he's probably at home being sore about it, but between everything Bucky has to get done by tomorrow morning, he won't have a chance to do anything about it before he ships out. He's out of time.

They drop off Miri, then Dot, then make their way back up Bedford Ave till they find themselves loitering on Louise's front stoop.

“Still sore at Steve?” Becca asks, kicking the sole of her shoe up against the stairwell railing.

“I'm not sore at Steve,” Bucky says. “Just because he isn't here doesn't mean we're sore at each other. We said goodbye at the Expo. It's fine.”

“You said goodbye at the Expo,” Becca says flatly. “In public. With people around. That's _not_ a proper goodbye.”

“It was entirely proper,” Bucky says.

“Not for a _goodbye,_ ” Becca insists, proving she's been reading too many of the pulp romance novels Louise gets her older sister to buy for them. “A proper goodbye needs to have intense eye contact, and fervent promises, and a passionate embrace... followed by lots of kissing–”

Bucky presses the palm of his hand into her face, squashing her nose and cutting her words off before she can say anything too incriminating.

“ _Dayenu_!” she yelps, slipping out of English now that they've left mixed company and are back in the arguable shtetl of Williamsburg.

Bucky shakes his head. “Where'd you learn to talk like that, huh? _Fervent promises_ , oy gevult.”

“It's what you deserve,” Becca says, voice gone quiet and sincere all of a sudden, like she's aged twenty years in a single moment, maturity weighing her words down. “You and Steve, both.”

Bucky glances around the darkened street warily, then back at Becca, who is fifteen again in a flash. “We shouldn't be talking about this.”

“Why not?”

“If Ma–”

“Ma knows.”

“I know Ma knows,” Bucky sighs. She'd told him, in not so many words, that she didn't care what he got up to in his own home provided it didn’t get in the way of Becca making a good marriage. Ma had a few options already picked out, and once Becca made up her mind, Bucky could do as he pleased. Not that Bucky was going to tell Becca any of that. She'd run off with a Scotsman purely out of spite. “The part about it is–”

“Ma knows, everybody at shul knows on account of how you two look at each other, why can't you just–”

“It's complicated–”

“It's not–”

“ _Becca_ ,” Bucky says, exasperated and already too tired for words, and his night isn't even half over yet. “I can't– I gotta sit with Mr. Berman at midnight, and then go to the mikvah at seven, and then board a boat for Europe at nine. I appreciate your concern, but the time for worrying about Ma and shul and Steve, that's passed. I'll worry about it again when the war's over.”

Becca scowls, deeply. She kicks the stair again, hard, and then heaves a deep, heartfelt sigh. “Fine. Far be it for me to argue with King Solomon.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says.

Becca glances up at the windows of the second floor apartment, where her friend is undoubtedly waiting for her to arrive with highly-embellished stories from her foray into the dance hall. She turns away from the stoop and paces up the sidewalk three steps, and then back again. “Goodbyes are terrible,” she complains.

“Did you sneak into the dance hall to flirt, or to spend more time with me?” Bucky asks knowingly, crossing his arms with a smug grin. “You could have just asked.”

“And ruin the surprise? I think not.” She stops pacing to stare up at him. She'd done her crying when his draft notice arrived, and again when he'd left for training, and again yesterday when he got his orders and he spent one last shabbos with his family. She looks like she might be gearing up for another jag, but it's past eleven now and Bucky just doesn't have the time.

He places his hands on her shoulders and gently turns her to face him so he can stare intently at her eyes.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I fervently promise,” Bucky begins.

“Oh, stop!”

“I _fervently_ promise– what am I promising?”

Becca's chin wobbles. “To come home?”

Bucky smiles at her, as if a strong enough promise really was enough to guarantee his safe return from a war that's cost them three boys from their block already. He raises his right hand to hers, hooks their littlest fingers together like they did when they were children, and says, “I promise, fervently, that I will do everything I can to make it home.”

He waits until she nods, that she's heard the difference between what she asked for and what he gave her. Waits until they’ve completed the ritual – kissing the tops of their thumbs before releasing pinkie fingers – then he swoops in, wraps his arms around her, lifts her up off her feet and swings her around in wide, looping circles, her feet flying out sideways and her hands clutching the wool of his jacket until she starts to giggle. He stops and sets her back down before she starts to shriek.

“There's your passionate embrace,” he says. He presses his lips to her forehead, like he’s done ten thousand times since he was ten years old and finally, finally an older brother, and says, “And there's your kiss. Mazel tov. How's that for your proper goodbye?”

Becca wipes her eyes and turns to walk up the steps. “Six out of ten.”

Bucky watches her go through both sets of doors and start up the front stairwell. When at last the soles of her feet are out of sight, he turns, and heads down the sidewalk to his next responsibility.

*

Bucky relieves Shmeul at midnight and settles into a chair in the corner of Mr. Berman's tiny apartment on the eighth floor of a tenement block that's more run-down than it should be, given its age.

He sits with the body, eyes watchful and alert despite the late hour, until the grey of dawn seeps through the window and brightens into morning. His last morning in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York, United States.

At seven, Davey Cohen comes to relieve him with a handshake and a grim smile, and that’s it for his responsibilities to the chevra kadisha – the local burial society, anyway; God only knows what’s in store for him on the Front.

He slowly walks the ten or so blocks to the men’s mikvah, letting his feet drag as he takes in the sights, the sounds, the smells. Tenements framed by distant high rises, voices arguing in Yiddish and Russian and Polish and English, bagels boiling and eggs frying…

Two and a half million people squeezed up next to each other like sardines, a quarter of them Jewish, and at least half of those on talking terms with his ma. Add in all the Irishmen who remember his da’s da in the old country and, well, there’s a reason it takes him a good half an hour to get to his destination this morning, with so many folks stopping him to wish him safe travels, good health, a speedy end to the war, and just… life.

It’s not till he gets to the mikvah’s preparation room that he’s finally alone for the first time in he can’t remember how long. Last night doesn’t count – Mr. Berman was there, still. He makes sure to wash well, clipping his nails, shaving carefully, making sure nothing from outside is left on his skin or in his hair, that will come between him and the water.

When he’s ready, he knocks on the door to the mikvah room, and the attendant lets him in. He hasn’t been here since the day before Yom Kippur, hadn’t planned on going again until next year’s High Holy Days, but… he doesn’t know when he’ll next have the chance to have a real bath, much less a spiritual one, and whatever the war might do to him, whatever the war might make him do, at least he’ll go into it clean, and pure, and – ready. None of that may last more than five minutes on the front, but this is what he can control, and this is what he’s got.

The mikvah is warm and quiet and glazed in white. He steps down the seven stairs into the tiled basin of water until it reaches the middle of his chest. He closes his eyes, says the blessing, and then sinks down until the water covers him completely.

He stays down for what would be the span of a breath, letting the silence, the calmness, seep into his skin, his heart, his mind. He lets the air out of his lungs. Lets go of all the New York worries he’s been holding onto, guarding like a stray dog: Becca's antics, Steve's thirst for war, Ma's worries and Da's job. Lets it all out, until his mind is as quiet and warm and clear as the water surrounding him.

Then he rises back up and takes a new, fresh breath, and says:

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

He does it twice more. And then he’s done.

*

His father is waiting for him on the sidewalk when he leaves. Da’s wearing his Sunday best, even though it’s Thursday morning and he needs to be at work half an hour ago.

“I got myself leave to walk you to the depot,” Da says, apology in his tone, thickened by the Irish of his accent, “but then I have to go.”

“No, Da, it’s…” Bucky looks at the ground for a moment so he doesn’t end up doing something ridiculous. “Thank you.”

Da chucks Bucky under the chin to get him to look him in the eye, and holds that stare for a long moment. There’s a lot in that look that Bucky can’t decipher, but he knows he’s seen it directed at his ma, his sister, himself, even, occasionally, Steve. Then Da’s the one who has to clear his throat and look away.

They start walking, matching strides, and Da starts to speak, his words wandering the way they always do.

“I never cared for boats much, you know. I took my first boat when I was younger than you, and we landed here in New York and I swore I'd never get on another boat again so long as I lived.” Da shakes his head with a laugh that doesn't reach his eyes. “Well, we made it five years. And good years they were, too. And then my new country called us up and said, ‘Get back on the boat! You're going back to the old country and then you're going to war.’ So my brother and I, your uncle Jamie, we got on another boat, and off we went.

“I didn't care for that boat, either. But it wasn't nearly so bad as the third boat, the one I took home again, because on that one, I was alone.”

They stop at a corner. Da breathes in deep. Bucky watches him out of the corner of his eye, and waits for him to collect himself. Da doesn't talk about his brother much, and rarely, if ever, calls Bucky by his full English name.

“Your mother, now, she would tell you the most important thing is that you stay alive. And I agree with her, o'course. Don't think I don't. But in my experience…”

They turn another corner, and far down the way, the depot comes into view, GIs streaming inside. Da stutters for a moment at the sight, then visibly pulls himself back on track. “In my experience, Europe doesn't take too kindly to the Barnes family bein’ on its shores. It always makes us pay a price, and we don't ever get to haggle over it.

“So my advice, my boy,” Da says, voice strengthening. “Don't you worry about what the cost will be, because you'll have no say in the matter when the time comes. Just do what they ask of you and take damned good care of the boys around you. That's all you can do.”

“I will, Da,” Bucky says softly. “I promise.”

“Alright then. Come, give your father a kiss, then go get on your boat.”

Bucky does. Then Da places his hands on Bucky's head, and whispers:

  
יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ

_May God Bless you and guard you._

*

He wakes up.

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי

He wakes up on a table.

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ

He wakes up on a cold cold table and he doesn't remember where he is and he doesn't remember why he's there but he wakes up, he's woken up, he's woken up and he's lying on something and it's not a bed and it's not _not_ a bed–

It's a table and he wasn't asleep but he wasn't _not_ asleep so he has to say the modeh ani

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי _lefanecha melech..._

...it's time to say the modeh ani

... _melech hai vehkayam_

...and then he can get up off the table but there are straps

_shema_ יִשְׂרָאֵל

...there are straps

שְׁמַע _yisrael_

...and this isn't a bed

O _h God, where am I?_

...and he wasn't asleep

_modeh ani– no, no no_

...and _someone is there,_ someone is talking to Sergeant Barnes

“What an interesting specimen…”

...but the accent is wrong

“Make the straps tighter for when I inject the–”

...and the questions are wrong–

(Obey.)

“Tell me, Sergeant Barnes, where are your parents from, originally?”

...and it's not time for the modeh ani–

(Obey.)

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

...it's time for–

(Obey.)

“Sergeant James Barnes, United States Army, 32557038.”

*

Steve walks away from him, leads him out of the burning factory and into the surrounding forest, the air thickened by smoke and tension, and Bucky follows. He watches the newly-straightened line of Steve's back, the newly-broadened span of his shoulders, and thinks, _There weren't supposed to be any more miracles when the temple fell._

_Maybe this one slipped through_.

In the forest there is a clearing, and in the clearing there is a mass of men, maybe two hundred or more, soot-stained and stoic and hoisting stolen guns they keep very, very carefully pointed at the forest floor, and the sight of them all there, alive, escaped from their bounds, freezes Bucky in his tracks.

He'd thought they were dead. He was sure… he’d been on the table for so long, and then there were fire and explosions, and he just… assumed they were all dead, all of them.

And then Gabe, Gabriel Jones, born in Washington, DC, his grandmother born in Lviv, she puts onion in her latkes that Gabe eats with ketchup, Gabe who huddled with him in a prison cell to whisper the shema, to share in the horror of weapons that reduce a body to so much ash, Gabe who said, “You heard the rumors? About the trains, where they're taking them?” and Bucky said, “I heard all the rumors till the letters stopped coming,” and Gabe's little _oy vey_ sounded so much like home that Bucky forgot for just a moment that he wasn't ever going home– Gabe is the one who spots them first.

Gabe gives a sharp whistle, drawing the attention of the other prisoners – soldiers, survivors – and then lets out a relieved laugh. “Sarge is back!”

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” calls a voice from the crowd of men, then Dugan elbows his way forward, it has to be Dugan, no one else in the 107th risks the safety of his cranium for the sake of fashion. “Well I'll be damned, Barnes you lucky sonofabitch.”

“Watch how you talk about my mother,” Bucky says, unsteadily, the falseness of his cheer evident for the world to see, but maybe no one notices, because his voice is muffled by the embrace Dugan gives him that lifts him off his feet. He hears Steve laugh, behind him, and then he's swarmed by his cellmates – his former cellmates, maybe now they've passed through the Red Sea and out of Egypt – who are all announcing, with various degrees of joy and volume, that they knew he was alive, would survive, wasn't dead.

*

יעקוב

Gabe says, voice quiet and low, when the joy of surprised survival has run up against the exhaustion of battle and realization of the thirty miles between where they stand and where safety sits. When they've all bunked down, and Steve is standing watch sitting up against a tree just out of sight, and Bucky is tucked into his side because there are guns that can disintegrate people in a heartbeat so who cares who knows?

גַּבְרִיאֵל

Bucky replies, not lifting his head from Steve's shoulder. It's long past midnight, and he's spent the past hours as Sergeant Barnes, checking on the health and fitness and battle-readiness of every single soul suddenly under Steve's command, making jokes and checking injuries and raising spirits as well as he can, and he hasn't been this tired since the day he shipped out to this godawful old country.

“Vus macha da?” Steve asks concernedly.

“Ikh farshtey – redt ir Yidish?” Gabe blinks in obvious surprise at the unexpected words coming out of Steve's Irish face. He doesn't know just how many hours Steve spent playing on the floor of the Barnes apartment, sitting at the table at Shabbos, soaking up every sight and sound with that too-sharp brain of his.

“Eyn shprakh iz keyn eyn mal nisht genug,” Steve says. _One language is never enough._ The little shit.

Bucky snorts, shifting to get a better look at Gabe and say, “Told you he was a haimisher mensch.”

“You weren't kidding,” Gabe replies with eyebrows raised, impressed. “Nothing's wrong, Cap. I was just seeing if Barnes wanted to do the Birkat Hagomel.”

Bucky takes his turn to start in surprise and protest, “We don't have enough guys for a minyan.”

Gabe just shrugs, unconcerned, and waits.

Bucky sweeps another thorough glance across their makeshift encampment, the tiny stockpile of supplies at the center, the trees surrounding them hiding unknown perils. “And the dangerous journey isn't exactly over with.”

But they've made it this far. They've gotten out, he's gotten off that terrible table and his body still works and he's been using Steve's healthy new chest as a pillow for the past twenty minutes, and that's plenty to be grateful for. It only takes another moment of deliberation for Bucky to say, “Oh hell, let's do it. Couldn't hurt.”

Gabe grins, and kindly crouches down next to him so that he doesn't have to stand up. Steve tightens the arm that's wrapped around him, pulling him closer and more comfortable with easy strength, and that's something they're going to be talking about later when the inside of Bucky's head isn't filled with screaming.

Gabe takes his free hand, and, pretending they're at home at temple instead of bedded down on browned leaves, they whisper it together.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם. הַגּומֵל לְחַיָּבִים טובות. שֶׁגְּמָלַנִי כָּל טוב

They say the words, and Bucky breathes, and remembers to be glad to be alive.

*

They march back to Allied territory. Bucky's hands stay on the gun Morita passed him with a grim nod that first night. He keeps pace with Steve. He marches. He scans the trees for enemy soldiers. He listens for the sound of tanks. He sergeants the men, and he sergeants Steve.

They make it back.

Against all odds, they make it back.

Then Steve is swept off by some brunette in a uniform and Bucky is swept off by some medic in a different uniform, and before he knows it he's in a tent and there's a table ( _shema yisrael_ ) and there's a tray of medical tools ( _Adonai eloheinu_ ) and there's a table ( _Adonai echad_ ) and there's a tray and there's a table and there's a table and there's a table a table a table

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

“–Sarge? Hey Sarge, what the hell you doing out here?”

He looks up. It's… it's Jim. Morita. The one who… who told him he had pneumonia. Who told him to take it easy. Who told the others, the others in the cell with them, told them they needed to find a way to help him rest, or he was going to drown on the factory floor from too much fluid in the lungs. And, by God, they did, the damned idiots all helped him.

Until the guards came for him. And then it was just the…

He glances at the medic tent, now half a city block away somehow, and then shakes himself all over and gets to his feet. “Just needed a breather,” he explains, wiping dirt off the seat of his pants – how did he end up on the damn _ground?_

“You been checked out yet?” Morita asks, frowning as takes in the dirty scrapes on Bucky's face and hands.

Bucky looks at the medic tent again. He could lie. He could tell the others, sure, he'd been checked over and given a handful of chalky horse pills to swallow. He could tell Steve the doctors said he was fine, just tired and scratched up. There were two hundred and thirty-seven of them, the POWs who had returned. He could let himself be passed over.

“Not yet,” he admits, squaring his shoulders and turning toward the tent. When faced with a difficult choice, the harder one is usually the right one. That's what got his Ma out of the Old Country before the last war. That's what got his Irish Catholic Da the finest balabusta in all of Brooklyn for a wife. That's what got Bucky the angriest, most righteous fella in the tristate area for a best guy.

It's just another medical check. It's not a pogrom. Not even a back-alley brawl. It shouldn't scare him this damn much.

“I gotta stop over there, too,” Morita says, lying through his teeth like it ain't anything. “Walk with me?”

Bucky grins past the anxiety churning in his chest at the thought of returning to the tent, grins and jokes because Morita is letting him, thank God for Morita right now. “Sure thing, pal. Wouldn't want you to get lost on the way.”

“Yeah,” Morita agrees, voice dry as the desert. “That'd be terrible.”

*

They go back to London, and Steve gets his team (and a vague promise from Agent Carter, _and doesn’t that burn like wartime whiskey_ ), and the team gets training and more training, and Steve goes off to secret meetings and returns with a ridiculous shield that he claims can stop a bullet dead, though he won't explain exactly how he knows.

And then they’re given a three-day leave before the start of their first mission, and lo and behold, it’s on the weekend, no less. The rest of the Howlies head out early Saturday morning, planning to spend the entire day getting kicked out of as many drinking establishments as they can.

Bucky sleeps in and wakes up slowly, finding Steve wrapped around him like they're at their old apartment in Brooklyn, head tucked under Bucky's chin and legs tangled together beneath the blanket. Steve must have crawled in with him the moment the door closed behind the other fellas, and it feels like any other morning except for the likelihood that they'll both be dead this time next week.

Bucky takes a breath,

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם,

He trails off. He remembers saying the modeh ani on the table. Waking up alone, strapped down, needle in his vein and fluid in his lungs, screams echoing through his mind as the walls closed in, in, in.

He's not alone, now. He can breathe easily, move easily, with no aches in his bones or holes marring his skin. He's not in the factory, he's not strapped down, but even Steve's arm is too much– too much–

“She-he-chezarta bee nishmatee,” Steve mumbles into his shoulder, picking up the fight right where Bucky fell off, same as always, forging forward with his right hook and leaving relief in his wake.

It makes Bucky smile, and remember. There's more to his life than the table.

שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה. רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ.

Bucky finishes the prayer. Steve squeezes him tighter, and Bucky holds himself still underneath Steve's arm until Steve notices even in his sleep, wakes up enough to ask, “Buck? You alright?”

“I don't think I like being held down,” Bucky admits quietly, shame coloring his words. He doesn’t want to admit it. Steve is the captain of a commando team, now – he has greater concerns to deal with than one single sergeant's neuroses.

Steve, of course, obviously disagrees. He immediately lifts his arm up and away, tucks it down between their bodies, until his hand is practically underneath Bucky's hip. The anxiety crawling under Bucky’s skin fizzles away almost immediately once the weight is gone. He clears his throat. Opens his mouth. And–

“If you're about to apologize,” Steve interrupts before he can get a single word out, “don't.”

“Wasn't gonna,” Bucky lies, reaching for the charisma that's just a bit too far off for him to fully grasp. He fumbles, and turns in to Steve's body and all of its warmth.

“Sure you weren't, Buck,” Steve says back. He tilts his head just _so_ , and starts kissing the sensitive skin of Bucky's neck, the exact spot that's guaranteed to send tingles down his spine. “You need coffee before we get started?”

“You got a better way than coffee–” his voice hitches when Steve's kisses switch to gentle scrapes of his teeth across Bucky's clavicle, “–of waking me up?”

Steve hums, and goes to his knees.

He keeps his hands by his sides the whole time, doesn't grab Bucky's hips or thighs or knees the way he normally would. Bucky loves him for a whole lot of reasons – the curve of his shy smile, the way he brushes his hair off his forehead when he's nervous, how he's brave and angry and gentle all at once, how he talks and talks about settling down with a nice girl but then always comes back to Bucky, always – but he keeps his hands down, and Bucky loves him for that, too.

*

There's a night, years into this new way of fighting a war with Steve and the Howlies by his side, when they are on their way back to base from a mission and take shelter in a bombed-out, abandoned village, weeds growing over the rubble and saplings sprouting through collapsed roofs. Outside of town, on a little hilltop almost obscured by the trees, is an equally small brick building. Bucky checks it for snipers – it’s where he’d set up, if he were using the village to lure Allied soldiers into a trap – and finds it's not a Nazi nest.

It's a synagogue.

The ark is empty. The Torah scroll is long gone. Anything of value has been salvaged or looted or secreted away. All that's left is the paint on the walls, stars and menorahs and scrolls and lions. Telling the story of the people who lived there, studied there, worshipped there. And who might, someday, return.

“Buck?” Steve asks from the doorway, where one of the large wooden doors hangs by a single hinge, letting leaves and brush creep inside to cover the tiled floor.

Bucky realizes he's lost some time, staring around the first temple he's stepped foot in since – god, has it been since he left New York? That last weekend, squeezed on a bench between Reuven and Eli, waiting for services to end so he could… he doesn't even remember where he went afterward, just that he was antsy as hell to get there.

“I'm here,” Bucky says. He hears Steve step up beside him, staring at the empty ark. “You think they took the Torah with them when they left?”

“I don't know, Buck,” Steve says quietly, because Steve won't lie to him, won't tell him some happy falsehood, not even to prevent this ache in his heart. “I don't know.”

Bucky shakes his head and doesn't say anything, because what else is there to say? They're still alive; it's a miracle they're still alive, given who and how they're fighting. It's a miracle Steve is even here at all, and with miracles like that in the world, why can't there a be a miraculous end to the war? Why can't they all be miraculously sent home?

Steve steps closer to him. Close enough to throw an arm around Bucky's shoulder and pull him in close to his side, like how they used to do on Bucky's parents’ couch, Bucky slouched down enough to fit easily under Steve's arm.

It's nice to know some things haven't changed. That he can still feel a little bit safe, even with two layers of armor and uniform and other tools of war squeezed between them. He feels Steve turn his head, feels him press a kiss to his cheek like he used to do back when he was six damn years old and had seen Becca do it first and figured it was okay, and he never stopped, not in private, not even when they started kissing properly, too.

Bucky wants to go home so badly it takes his breath away. Wants to sit on the couch and neck with Steve. Wants to help Becca with her homework and help Da carry sacks of groceries up the stairs. Wants to listen to his Ma sing, and watch her comb her hair and tie it up with a tichel that matches her dress. Wants to go to his own temple, well-lit and bursting with living, breathing, talking, praying, singing bodies.

Miracles aren't supposed to happen anymore – we're the ones who are supposed to make the miracles happen, Rabbi Eliezer said once, and his voice echoes in Bucky's head: What are _you_ doing to make your miracle happen?

_I'm fighting a war I didn't start that I'm trying my damndest to finish. I'm doing everything asked of me. I'm keeping the boys around me safe as I can._

He leans more heavily into Steve's side, tucks his head into Steve's neck, and wonders why on earth all this effort isn't enough, why he's standing in an empty temple with an overflowing heart and eyes that burn.

When Bucky's breath has finally stopped shaking, Steve shifts slightly and asks, out of the blue, “Hey, what day is it?”

Bucky does some quick math in his head. They parachuted in on the 12th, then hiked for three days to the HYDRA base, blew it up on the fourth, and then started hiking back out to their pick up point, which makes today… “The 18th, I think. Why?”

“Friday the 18th?” Steve asks.

Bucky closes his eyes and groans. “Steven Grant. Did you know this was here? Did you plan this?”

“No, I swear, I didn't,” Steve promises, and Bucky believes him if only because Steve is a terrible liar. “But hang on, I'll be back in a second.”

He jogs out the broken doorway, leaving Bucky alone with the ghosts of a hundred-thousand

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

and

אֲדֹנָי, שְׂפָתַי תִּפְתָּח וּפִי יַגִּיד תְּהִלָּתֶךָ

and

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ

Steve doesn't come back alone, or empty-handed.

“Wow.” The sound of a third voice echoes across the sanctuary. Gabe. Just Gabe. “My bubbe told me about the temple she went to as a kid. This looks just like that, the paintings and everything. Wow.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, composed again. “Mine, too.”

He looks at Steve, who holds up a pack of matches, and two short, stubby candle ends.

“Have you… have you been schlepping those back and forth all across Europe on the off chance we might run across an abandoned shul?” Bucky asks, not sure whether he's impressed or appalled. They haven't exactly been camping with the Boy Scouts – every ounce that goes into their packs has to either feed them, clothe them, or kill someone else.

“No,” Steve says. “I've been schlepping them back and forth all across Europe on the off chance you might get homesick and want to do shabbos.”

“You're such a jerk sometimes,” Bucky says.

Steve hangs his head, but not fast enough to hide the grin. “Yeah, I know.”

“We don't have any wine. Or bread,” Bucky points out. But still, he takes the two little candles, and he sets them up on the windowsill next to the ark, the one that still has a mostly-intact windowpane.

“We'll make do,” Gabe says. He pulls his wool beanie onto his head, then hands Buck a small scrap of fabric. No, not a scrap – a kippa, folded and a bit crushed, and embroidered with the Tree of Life. He glances sharply at Gabe and tries to hand it back to him, it's his, and Gabe just says, “You don't have anything else. C'mon, Sarge.”

He hasn't been able to stand having anything on his head. Not since the table. He keeps “losing” the cover for his dress uniform, and the quartermaster keeps issuing him a new one, stubbornly insisting he needs to keep his appearance to army regs.

He unfolds the kippa. Places it on the crown of his head.

It's heavy. It's so heavy. It should be a comfort, it should be– it shouldn't feel like a weight at all, but it does, pressing down on him and–

The weight is gone. Bucky shakes his head to clear it. Steve is wearing Gabe's kippa, now. He says, “I'm the highest ranking officer here, I gotta wear the cover. Army regs.”

On his right, Gabe snorts, “You're not even Jewish, Cap.”

Steve shrugs, and gives that little smirk of his. “No. But I'm Jewish-adjacent. You guys gonna light the candles, or do I gotta do everything?”

“Shut the hell up, you're not lighting the damn candles,” Bucky manages to grouse. If they notice how strained his voice is, they don't show it. “Jones, light ‘em up.”

Gabe does. He says the Shabbat blessing. Says the blessing for wine, even though they don't have any, says the blessing for bread, even though they don't have any of that, either. Says the shehecheyanu, because yeah, this probably counts as a special occasion, so they might as well.

Then they cover their eyes, and say the Shema,

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

and then the candles are burned almost all the way down, leaving little puddles of wax on the painted brick of the windowsill.

They watch until the flames flicker and burn out, one after the other, and the last glowing wick goes cold, leaving them shrouded in the darkness of night, the after-images of the flames dancing in front of their eyes.

Gabe rouses himself first. “This mean we get to take tomorrow off, Cap?”

“Sorry, fellas,” Steve says, and he _is_ sorry is the thing, is what makes it not an asshole thing to say. “We have 20 more miles to hike before we're safe. Maybe next week.”

*

Bucky writes a letter to Rebecca, describing the temple they found, the paintings on the walls and ceilings, the empty ark and the little shabbat they held while there.

He doesn’t tell her about the mass grave they found in the woods behind the village.

He doesn’t describe how the Howlies (seven of them, not a minyan, not enough) stood in a half-circle with their hats off while Bucky and Gabe stumbled their way through the mourner’s kaddish ( _Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra…_ ) before hurring to the pick-up point.

He doesn’t say how later, much later, he punched the wall and kicked the wainscotting and cursed,

( _Fuck, fuck, fuck them, fuck everyone, fuck all of them that helped or stood by or did nothing, fuck!_ )

and Steve just stood beside him and then held onto his arm and then pulled him in close and whispered into his hair, “I know, I know, Yaakov, I know. Bite, ikh hab dikh lib, ikh hab dikh lib,” as if that _mattered,_ as if that _helped._

(It does, it did).

_I am trying like hell to keep my promise,_ he writes. _But I don’t know that I’ll be the same person, if I do._

*

He is staring down at the chasm, and then the whine of those awful HYDRA weapons and ( _Shit it’s aiming at Steve_ ) and then the train shudders and he’s thrown off his feet ( _Shit!_ ) and he catches the railing and there’s Steve and _hold on_ and Steve will reach him if he can just _hold on hold on hold–_

_BUCKY HOLD ON!_

He tries, he tries, he tries–

–but then he falls.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

The wind rushes past his ears, he can’t hear himself screaming, he knows he’s screaming–

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

He can see Steve getting smaller, smaller, no– further away– he can’t–

_Steve – Steve, no!_

And then he takes a breath ( _Steve!_ ), and curls his body up tight ( _No!_ ), and he braces for the impact ( _Oh, God_ ), and he closes his eyes and he only manages to get out the first word,

שְׁמַע

and then he hits the ground, and it’s nothing but white.

*

He awakens in pain ( _Oh, God_ ). Raw (יְהוָה), searing (שְׁמַע), back-breaking (אֶחָֽד), mind-shattering (אֱלֹהֵינוּ) pain. The sound of rushing wind in his ears ( _Steve!_ ), screaming ( _Ratevet!_ ), screaming ( _Adonai!_ ), he's screaming ( _STEVE!!!!_ ) someone is dragging him ( _no no no gey avek fun mir!)_ there is blood blood blood he cannot–

*

He wakes up.

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי

He wakes up on a table.

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ

He wakes up on–

אֲנִי hedoM

Oh, God.

Oh, God, he's back on the table ( _the table the table the table_ ). He never left the table. He's never–

Oh, God, the sound (A– יְהוָה). Oh, God, the screaming (אֱלֹהֵינוּ), the screaming (o _N–_ שְׁמַע), it's him, it's coming out of him ( _No!_ ), blood and bile ( _James Buchanan Barnes_ ) and spit and drool ( _Sergeant_ ) and screaming ( _No!_ ) at the table ( _ame_ שְׁ) and the doctors and the table ( _shem_ ע) and the restraints ( _Ma!_ ) and the bone saw, _oh, God–_

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל ianodA אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה dahce

*

מוֹדֶה אֲנִיahcenafel

He wakes up ( _cold cold cold_ ), and his arm is gone ( _ikh farshtey nisht_ ), and the stump is gone ( _oh, God_ ), and the searing pain is not gone ( _Steve, where are you?_ ), but he can see through it ( _Morita, Dugan, Gabe Gabe Gabe where are you where are you_ ), can speak through it, can see the doctor ( _the table the table the tablethetable_ ) inserting another needle into his remaining arm, can say, “Please don't, please.”

And then the doctor doesn't respond, doesn't look at him ( _Look at me, look at I’m alive stop don’t do this stop stop stop_ ). The doctor picks up a tool from the tray ( _no_ ) beside the table ( _no_ ), and presses it to his forehead ( _No!_ ) – Sergeant Bucky Barnes, Sergeant James…. James…. Barnes, Bucky to his friends, יעקוב to…. to his – and presses a trigger and it's fire (Obey) – it's lightning (Obey) – it's electricity, it's–

(Obey)

*

He wakes up on the table – _modeh ani –_

(Obey)

–and there is a new arm לְפָנֶֽיךָ and the doctors are crowded around him, _melech hai vehkayam_ the air of success making them foolish, bringing them in too close. He lifts the arm _what the hell is this_ and grabs the closest throat and squeezes until there's nothing left _blood_ , lets go and reaches for the restraints _gotta get out gotta get out gotta find– gotta find– gotta find him–_ and rips them away with a strength he didn't know he had _did he?_ and staggers to his feet off the table _the table the table the table baruch_ יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה _adonai elo– elo– uniehole–_

Something strikes him in the back _what the hell_ he falls to the floor _nono stop no_ strength burned out of him, muscles spamming _no no no no_ _shema yisrael adonai elo–_

He is kicked in the side, flipped onto his back _no no no adonai_ , still twitching with aftershocks _ado–nai_ hands grab him haul him upright onto the table _no the table no_ more restraints _no_ thicker straps _fight fight you need to fight_ an injection _you should have fought_ his muscles relax (Obey) _no you need to get up you need to fight_ the room tilts _he would have fought_ his head spins _who would have fought?_ his vision flickers like a dying flame (Obey) _I don’t know I don’t know who he is but he would not have stopped fighting_.

*

_...ahcenafel ina hedoM_

“Soldier!” a voice commands out of the dark. “What is your name?”

“My name is Sergeant… Sergeant...” His head pounds. He can't find the rest. _He can't remember the rest._ He can't find– what are they doing– why can’t he– surely he must–

(Obey)

Something is pressed to his forehead, where the skin is tender and bruised. The faintest touch hurts. They press it harder. It starts to…

שְׁמַע

–burn, it starts to burn and _oh God_ his teeth clench _oh God_ his body shakes – (Obey)

שְׁמַעיִשְׂרָאֵלשְׁמַעיִשְׂרָאֵל

–his mind– he cannot think through the fire (Obey), they are doing something, they are doing something, he cannot– (Obey)

_ysreialשְׂרָאֵלשְׁמַעobeyshemaיִשְׂרָאֵל_

Fire and trembling (Obey) and sparks and flames – a flame – flickering– (Obey.)

_learsiy_ שְׁמַעיִשְׁמַעיִamehS obey _שְׁמַעיִysreialobey_ shmriselyebo

The flame is gone (Obey) the image is gone (Obey) everything is gone– (Obey.)

_yeboAMEHSAMEHSyeboamehsamehsamehsamehs_

_SHEMASHEMAobeyshemaobeyobeyshemaobeyshema_

**SHEMA YIS–OBEY–**

……….

……….

…

…

..

..

.

.

And there is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing but white and walls and an urge to pray but there is _nothing nothing nothing_

_nothing_

(Obey.)

*

They wake him up (......). He is cold, cold, cold. They drag him across the room (......). His mouth forms words he doesn't know ( _...m ...fel ...M_ ). They slap his face, hard. They want silence ( _silent, white, walls_ ). He obeys ( _obey obey obey_ ).

They push him into a chair ( _not a table_ ). It leans back ( _not a table_ ). Sparks fly from the metal cage ( _white and walls and silence_ ) lowering onto his head. He raises his right hand ( _why?_ ). Covers his eyes (“What does he think he’s doing? Strap him down.”). His mouth opens again.

(Obey)

They pull his hand down. He stares up ( _white and walls and silence and nothing but obey obey obey)_. He wants to close his eyes. He can't.

The sparks surge.

שְׁ

*

They wake him up (......). They pull him out of the chair ( _sparks and shaking and nothingnothingnothingobey_ ) and set a gun in his hands ( _every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s obey_ ). They say, “You are to be the Fist of Hydra. You have work to do.”

He looks down at the gun, at his hands. Kindling a flame. Carrying an object. ( _observe and remember and obey_ ). He is not supposed to do that, if it is… if it is…

“What day is it?” he asks. The words fall out of his mouth. He cannot stop them. ( _Lekhah dodi liqrat kallah p'ne Shabbat neqabelahobey_ ).

They look at him. They are surprised. They say, “Why do you ask?”

He looks down again ( _Look down, look down, that lonesome road before you travel obey_ ). The gun is light, and new. He recognizes the style, the model, the manufacturer, the ammunition. He doesn't know why. _Why does it matter?_ Nothing matters. Everything is nothing. _You are nothing_.

(Obey.)

“The days matter,” he says, finally.

They take the gun away ( _Look up, look up, and obey your maker_ ). They put him back in the tank ( _before Gabriel obey obey obey_ ). He covers his eyes with his right hand. He is silent, and then he is cold.

*

They wake him up (.................).

There are… he wants to… he doesn't…

(Obey)

The chair (...). The restraints (...). The sound, like lightning, like a power surge through faulty wiring. (Obey. Obey. Obey.)

They give him a mission. He must kill a man. The man is standing in the way of an important trade agreement. Millions will starve if the agreement is not signed. Millions will starve. There will be no bread.

_...mehcel izomaH_

He shadows the man for three days, learning his comings and goings.

_...ztera-ah ...niM_

(.........)

(???)

At sundown on the third day, he sets his gun down. He turns off his radio. He lays down on the hidden roof across from the man's bedroom window and closes his eyes.

(Obey)

_I am obeying..._

The strike team arrives at mid-morning. They kill the man, loudly, and then they come to the roof.

“Soldat!” the Commander barks. “What are you doing?”

He frowns (Obey). He is confused (Obey). He thought the rules were clear (Obey).

He says, “I was resting.”

(Obey)

*

They wake him up (......). They tell him it is Monday ( _I missed it_ ). He has four days to complete his mission and return to base.

( _First, the chair, always the chair and nothing and better not to ask why, why, why, he is a good soldier, he obeys, he obeys_ )

(Obey.)

He is sent to kill a man. This man is a threat to the stability of the region, to the lives of all those who reside there. The country has been torn apart by war long enough. What is one death, weighed against the peace of a people? ( _I don’t like bullies._ )

He kills the man in the light of the setting sun, amber and gold and magenta streaks of light painting the stone wall behind where the body cools on the sand.

( _You are the Fist of Hydra. You will obey_.)

He returns to the pick-up point, returns to base, finds sand in the soles of his boots and the folds of his tac vest. He watches it fall to the concrete floor as they strip him of weapons and gear.

“What did you think, Soldat?” asks the Commander. The Commander is young. His voice is sharp with cruel amusement..

“About what?” he replies. What he thinks is nothing. What matters is nothing. Only the mission: keep the world safe. Stay alive. Ignore any thoughts which are not orders. Obey.

“Your homeland, of course! Didn't you recognize it?” The Commander is laughing outright, now. The technicians and soldiers laugh with him, standing just behind his shoulder– safe.

“I am the Fist of Hydra,” he says. This is a fact. Another fact: “I have no home.”

“Oh, ho! What would your rabbi say, to hear you reject your beloved Zion?”

A flash of insight. A voice. Two voices, arguing over a thick scroll, Old World accents lit under the glow of New World electric lightbulbs.

“Rabbi Lev would say that the People of the Book deserve to end their exile and return to the Land of Milk and Honey,” he says.

The laughter cuts off.

“Rabbi Eliezer would say it's a nationalist ruse to kick hard-working people out of their rightful homes in America,” he says.

The Commander stares. The technicians reach for the chair hurriedly, preparing the restraints and the controls and the power supply. The Commander asks, slowly, “And what do you think, Soldat?”

He doesn't know how he knows Rabbi Eliezer or Rabbi Lev, how he knows what they would say ( _“Oy gevult, would you listen to this goyische meshuggah?”_ ). He doesn't know what Zion is (...... _hS_ ). Doesn't know what he thinks of the unfamiliar country (...... _iY_ )  filled with sand and olive trees and old, old stone (.... _arsiY_ ). Just that, “It’s nice and all, but it ain't Brooklyn.”

The soldiers grab his arms, two men on each side. They pull him toward the chair, press him down into the seat. He shudders. He does not resist. It is worse – somehow, despite the white and the walls and the silence, he knows – it is worse when he resists the treatments. The treatments are necessary. His mind is diseased.

The restrains lock over his arms, clanging loudly as they connect with the left. The power bank surges, warming up. He closes his eyes.

... _learsiy amehS_

“Shut him up!” The Commander shouts over the din.

... _uniehole ianodA_

Forceps enter his mouth (.... _ma_....), pry it wide open (........ _siY_ ), till the tendons in his jaw crack and then pop (........ _ehS_ ). Cold, wet, hard rubber is shoved inside (.... _ch_....). A blow to his chin to close it (.... _odA_....), then straps (........ _Da!_ ), then the lights ( _obey_ ), searingly blinding behind his eyelids ( _obey_ ), and then there is nothing but the voltage ( _OBE_ Y) and whatever screams can make their way out past leather and rubber and the lump in his throat and the walls of the white white room closing in ( _OBEY FORGET OBEY_ ).

*

They wake him up. They put him in the chair. He opens his mouth for the bite guard. He bites down. The power surges. Sparks fly above his head.

The pull him out, hand him a file. They tell him it is Sunday.

“Oh,” he says. He does not know why. “I missed it.”

“Missed what?” the Commander asks. The Commander is old.

“I don't know,” he says, and the Commander frowns.

They fit him with a tac vest, goggles, and a mask that covers his face below the eyes. They send him out of the base with the strike team. They are gone for six days, and then they return.

The mission is not yet over. The traps are laid, the plans are made, and yet they return to base and they put him in the chair and they put the bite guard in his mouth and strap down his arms and–

_–S_

They pull him from the chair. They must have woken him up. He is missing something.

“What day is it?” he asks. He does not know why.

“Sunday,” they say. “This mission has already been begun by your comrades. Now you must finish it, for the good of mankind.”

He frowns ( _Sunday_ ). He thinks he has missed something important ( _Sunday_ ). He ignores it ( _Sunday?_ ). His mind is always filled with stray, useless thoughts. They have told him that he must push them away. They have told him that he must learn to ignore these thoughts, these symptoms of his illness, the reason for the chair. He must control himself, and be an obedient soldier, and complete the mission.

He puts the mask on.

*

They wake him up from the cold, push him into the chair while he is still shivering, until the sparks shoot into his brain and wipe it of confusion, worry, concern. He is grateful. His mind is clear after the chair.

It is worth it to have his mind clear. There is too much when he wakes up. None of it makes sense. The chair is not nearly as painful as the first moments just out of the tank, when he opens his eyes and thinks that he is strapped to a table, that the words spoken around him are wrong, that he doesn’t belong, that he is meant for something…. Else. That he is missing something vital.

The treatments are highly effective, they say.

He used to be much worse, they say.

He is a much better soldier now, they say. He is helping to create a peaceful world.

They tell him it is Thursday ( _the sixth day_ ). They give him a mission ( _repair the world_ ). They want confirmed death in 21 hours. They outfit him, take him to the drop-off point, and release him into the crowded city.

Twenty hours later he kills the man who is embezzling funds from the government, from charity, and from Hydra's corporate interests ( _take action, do something, make the world better_ ). He steps out onto the street and makes his way to the pick-up point. He notices the skyscrapers but does not glance up at them. He notices the storefronts but does not peer through their windows. He notices the scent of bread dough, boiled and then baked, but does not search for its source.

(Obey)

He notices the woman following him. He does not look at her. He lengthens his stride, moving easily in the wide-legged pants and dark coat.

He reaches the entrance to an alley, turns at the last moment to step into it, out of the crowded sidewalk and into the shadows. The sun is nearly to the horizon, now. He must reach the rendezvous by sunset.

The woman follows him, her steps heavy and purposeful. They are not the steps of a soldier or a killer. They are the steps of a…. of a… a balabusta. _What?_

There is a door into the alley. He will break the lock and escape through the building, reach the rendezvous from the north–

“Bucky?”

He freezes, hand on the lock. He does not know why. She will see him in a moment. There must be no witnesses. He must not allow witnesses. No one can see the face of the Winter Soldier and live. _Why are you stopping?_

(Obey.)

“Bucky?” she asks again. Then, “יעקוב? Is that– it can't be–”

She places a hand on his back _how did she get so close_ and he finally acts _leave no witnesses_ , spinning around to grab her arms and push her against the alley wall, hidden from sight of the street by a dumpster. _She’s just a kid_.

He looks at her. Hazel eyes, stubborn chin ( _That’s your Da’s Irish cleft_ ). Brown hair peppered with grey. She is in her late forties, and that surprises him. He expected her to be a teenager. He thought she was a teenager. The mistake burns the back of his throat. _What the hell?_

“Oh my God, Bucky! It's you!” she cries. There are tears on her face. _What’re you cryin’ for, kid?_ Then her hands grip his wrists, and she says, “Bucky, _what the fuck?”_

He stares at her. _Run!_ He does not move. _Run!_ Something inside, something in his body, in his chest, is burning. Is screaming. _No!_ Is weeping in relief, and in terror.

(Obey.)

They said leave no trace. _No!_ They said leave no witnesses. _I can’t!_ They said, do not allow anyone to see the face of the Fist of Hydra. _Not her!_ You can only complete your work in anonymity. You can repair the world only if your identity is secure.

(Obey.)

“What are you doing here?” she demands. ( _Bei mir bist du schoen, please let me explain_ ). She stares at him fiercely through her tears. “How are you _alive?_ ”

His mission is cooling on the floor of a penthouse apartment only six blocks from this alley. He must reach the pick-up point before sundown. He must not leave any witnesses. _Please don’t make me do this_.

(Obey.)

He jerks his left arm out of the woman's grasp, and both of her hands wrap instead around his right wrist, tightly, as if holding in for dear life instead of struggling to escape. _Why are you crying? Why are you touching me? Why doesn’t it hurt?_

When she sees him pull out the knife from beneath his coat, the woman stills. _Stop!_ Her eyes widen. _You’re scaring her!_ Her fingers spasm against his skin, and she gasps, “What are you– no, don't, Bucky, don't!”

Her cries will bring more witnesses. _No._ He must silence her. _No._ He raises his hand. Releases one metal finger from the handle of the knife and presses it to her lips.

“Hush,” he says. He says it gently. It matters that he is gentle. “It will be over soon, I promise.”

_I promise._

He must do it, and do it quickly. _I promise._ The shadows in the alley are deepening, and he must reach the rendezvous without being followed. _I promise._ He must quiet his thoughts. _I promise._ He must not listen. _I promise I will._ He must obey.

(Obey)

His movements are slow, sluggish. His hand does not want to put the blade against her throat. His mouth is dry. He swallows. He makes his hand move. The edge presses against her skin, and rests there. _I promise, fervently–_

The woman’s face is wet. Her breaths are irregular. _She thinks she is about to die._ Her pupils are so dilated he can barely see the faint hazel rings around them. _She thinks you are about to kill her._

(Obey)

_I can't..._

_Bucky..._

She closes her eyes. She says,

שְׁמַע

_What?_

She says,

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל

_What?_

(Obey.)

_No._

(Obey.)

Her voice breaks on a sob. He is frozen, staring at her. He does not understand. He does not understand, and it should not matter but it does, it does and his chest is tight and his throat is sore and his eyes are burning and his hand refuses to move as he waits, and listens, and waits.

She says,

יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ

She says,

יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

And he says it with her, speaks the familiar unfamiliar words like they matter, like they are something he used to know, pulled from beneath the floorboards, behind the walls of that white white white silent room. They roll out of his mouth easily, matching her rhythm, her cadence, her accent. _Adonai echad._

Her eyes fly open.

For a long minute, they don't move, eyes locked, hazel on blue on hazel, as the knife presses a fine red line onto her skin.

(Obey.)

( _The_ hell _I will!_ )

He takes a deep breath and lets it out, emptying his lungs even as his mind fills with images, with voices, with scents and sounds and knowledge and intuition. The woman’s face is not familiar, he does not know her, and yet, when he opens his mouth, he says, almost on the cusp of confident: “I know you.”

“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes, it's me, you know me, I swear to God you know me, I'm your… God, Bucky, I'm your sister.”

_Bucky..._

He hears the knife hit the concrete. He doesn’t care – it doesn’t matter, it can rot in hell for all he cares because… because.... He lifts his empty hand, again, and strokes careful fingers across her chin, the cleft they both inherited from… from...

“I know you,” he repeats. The screaming in his mind has stopped, replaced by a roaring, like a torrent of water through a massive pipe. Some of it has leaked onto his face. He swallows tightly. Her chin, her eyes, the grey in her hair… “Baby Becca. Not a baby, anymore.”

She releases a sound not quite halfway between a snort and a sob, and shakes her head minutely, not enough to dislodge his touch. “No, I'm all grown up. But you, Bucky, you look exactly– Where have you been all this time? What happened to you?”

“I don’t know, he says, honest and startled and now deeply, deeply afraid. The minutes and seconds tick down in his head. If he is late, they will come looking for him, and whoever is with him. No witnesses. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t– how is that possible?” she asks.

“I am an excellent soldier, but I have a disease of the mind,” he explains. The voice is his, he thinks, but the words are not. “I am erratic, and have bad thoughts. The treatments help me focus on my mission.”

“Your mission?”

“To repair the world.”

Becca’s face goes hard. Angry. He leans away from her, and it softens again, but something is still wrong, something in her face is _very_ wrong.

“Come with me, Bucky, please,” she says. She begs. “Come see your–”

“I can’t,” he says. Something in his chest burns hot, but there has been no gunshot, no blade, no injury. He must leave. He must go, before they come, before they find her. “I have to report back.”

“Report back to _who?_ Just come home with me, we know people, whatever you're mixed up in, we can help you–"

“I _can’t,”_ he repeats. Leave no trace, leave no witnesses, report back to base. His time and his breath are growing short. He steps away from her, severing contact, and stoops to pick up the knife. “No one can know about this. About me. You can't tell _anyone_ , understand?”

“But why–"

He raises the knife again, and her voice cuts out. “You're a witness. You're a loose end. If they find out you have seen me, they will kill you.”

“Who are they?” she demands. The fear in her voice has given way to anger, making it all the more familiar to his confused ears. “Those bastards, what are they doing to you?”

He shakes his head and steps closer, lowering his head to meet her eyes gravely. “Forget this. Forget me. If you talk. They will know. And then they will send me to kill you.”

“But you wouldn't!” She insists. “You didn't just now, you– you stopped!”

“I'll forget you again,” he explains. His voice has gone gentle of its own accord. He thinks it remembers how to speak to her, even if he doesn't. He doesn’t want her to be distressed. “I'll forget you, and I'll kill you, and I'll remember you again after you're dead. You don't know these guys, Becca. They'll… they'll think it’s funny.”

His throat burns. He thinks it has been a very, very long time since he has begged. “Please don't let that happen.”

She closes her eyes and nods shakily. “Okay. Okay, I won't. I won't say anything.”

“Promise,” he insists.

“I promise,” she says, looking up at him again. “And Barneses always keep their promises. Eventually.”

He puts his knife away, raises his right fist to chest level, and extends the smallest finger. She mirrors the gesture and hooks her finger around his. They both lean forward and kiss the tops of their thumbs. He doesn't understand why he does it, what it means, but his body knows the motions and he follows its lead.

She holds tight to his hand. She is crying again. She says, “I'm so glad you're alive.”

He frowns. He pulls his hand away. He steps back.

“I'm not,” he says.

He leaves her there, crying in the alley, and makes it to the rendezvous with three minutes to spare.

They take him back to base. They take his report, his weapons, and his clothes. They take him to the tank.

When the door closes and the cold air begins to stream in through the vents, he closes his eyes and whispers,

“ _Shema… yisrael. Ado– adonai elo– elo– elohei–_ ”

*

They wake him up. They bring him in front of the Commander.

“Interesting,” the Commander says. The Commander is young. “Show me the procedure.”

The chair. He opens his mouth for the bite guard. He watches the machinery. He watches the sparks fly and the power surge and the whiteness descend and the walls close in and it does not matter, does not matter, does not–

“What day is it?” he asks, when his mind is once again blessedly silent and clear.

The Commander looks at the technician. The technician gestures. “He always asks that.”

“Is there a particular reason _why_?” The Commander asks. His tone is dangerous.

“He’s fully programmed and compliant. He retains independent thought and follows his orders,” the technician explains. “This is just a…. an old imprint, a piece of legacy code. We just tell him it’s Sunday, and reset him mid-mission if he’s going to be out of cryo longer than a week.”

“Hm,” the Commander says, folding his arms and bending over to get a closer look. “Tell me something, soldier. Tell me your name.”

He says, “Winter Soldier.”

“No, no, no. Not your designation. Your _name_.”

He frowns. He hesitates. He says, “I am the fist of HYDRA.”

“So if I said the name _James Buchanan Barnes_ , that would mean nothing to you?” the Commander asks. The technicians flinch.

“No,” he says. It echoes oddly in the white room of his mind, usually so very, very silent this early in a mission. It typically takes much longer for the silence to he broken apart by disjointed voices and the echoes of screams.

“And the name _Steve Rogers_?” the Commander asks. The technicians flinch again.

The sound of the name is grating. Like sandpaper over a wound, like a sharpened set of nails down a long, long chalkboard. “Who the hell is that?”

The Commander smiles. “Someday, you might find out. For now, I have a mission for you. Level six.”

The Commander gestures, and another technician passes him a file folder. “The targets are enemy agents, acting undercover as a wealthy married couple. They have stolen medical supplies that are vital for the treatment of sick American children. Retrieve the supplies and eliminate the operatives.”

He takes the folder. Two faces stare up at him from the inside cover. They are not familiar.

“These agents are skilled manipulators,” the Commander explains. “They know about the Winter Soldier. They will attempt to use psychological weapons to distract you from your mission.”

“The Winter Soldier can only operate in anonymity. How do they know?” he asks.

The Commander sighs heavily. He is disappointed. “Our enemies have placed moles within our organization. You must take extreme caution to follow your orders and not be distracted.”

He nods. He will obey.

He retrieves the bags of medicine and eliminates the operatives on a cold, snowy, abandoned roadside. They attempt to manipulate him, as the commander predicted. They do not succeed.

*

They wake him up. They put him in the chair. They send him to kill a man.

He is pursued. Vigorously.

He escapes, and returns to base. His mind is skipping like a record, projecting the arc of an arm and the impact of a shield over and over and over on the walls of his mind. He suppresses it. It does not matter. He focuses on the mission.

“Target eliminated,” he reports. “Pursued by enemy operative for two-hundred yards. Evaded capture and returned to rendezvous for extraction.”

“Describe the second operative,” the STRIKE team leader demands.

“White blonde male. Six foot. Two-hundred pounds. Used a shield as an offensive weapon.” He pauses. “What the hell kind of idiot _throws_ a shield?”

“A complete idiot,” the STRIKE team leader replies. “Good work, Soldier.”

*

They send him after two targets. They are a threat to the new world order. They are a threat to peace, and must be stopped.

He focuses on the woman, first. He is nearly successful, until the man appears ( _What the hell kind of idiot_ throws _a shield?_ ).

The man is tall, and strong, and– scared ( _He is never scared_ ). Unused to fighting an enemy of equal or greater strength ( _He never stops fighting_ ). It is only a matter of time until he will be subdued ( _He will never stop fighting, he’s an idiot who never stops–_ ).

“Bucky?” the man says.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he asks. He freezes, but only for a moment. He takes aim.

He is knocked off his feet. The third operative, who he did not see. He is losing efficiency. He is being manipulated. The cascade of intrusive thoughts has already begun.

( _Bucky)_

The white room is neither empty nor silent.

( _Bucky!)_

His mind is no longer clear.

( _A train, a bridge, a long fall, a hand stretched out, a face full of terror and love and anguish and–)_

He has lost functionality. His symptoms have reemerged.

( _Men Ken Lebn Nor Men Lost Nisht_ ).

He cannot complete his mission. His mind will continue to degrade without treatment.

(Obey)

He returns to base.

*

“But I knew him,” he says.

They put him in the chair ( _not a table_ ). They lock him in the restraints ( _nono – obey, obey_ ). They put the bite guard in his mouth ( _the treatments are necessary_ ) and he bites down ( _You will help bring about a new world order_ ) and he cannot speak ( _obey)_ and he cannot say– he cannot say– he cannot ( _but it isn’t Friday yet_ )–

( _Who the hell is Bucky?_ )

( _OBEY FORGET OBEY_ )

*

They pull him from the chair. They must have woken him up. He is missing something.

“What day is it?” he asks. He does not know why.

“Monday,” they say.

He frowns ( _Monday_ ). He thinks he has missed something important ( _Monday?_ ). He ignores it.

“We are under attack by outside forces,” they say. “These individuals wish to stop us from launching our helicarriers, which are meant to protect the innocent from terrorism. You must defend the helicarriers at all costs.”

*

He fights. He makes a path to the airship. He meets the enemy. He fights, and fights, and–

“You know me.” The voice reverberates inside of him, echoing deep, bouncing back and forth until he cant tell anymore which direction it came from. His mind is white and empty and silent but the words, the words, the voice, the voice it gets louder with every note, makes the walls tremble and crack–

( _What's Steve going to do without you rescuing him all the–I won't miss you at all_ )

“No, I don't!” The walls tremble and crack and he fights, he fights, he is being manipulated, he is being controlled–  

( _You guys gonna light the candles, or do you need coffee before we get started?_ )

“Bucky, you've known me your whole life.” The walls tremble and crack and he fights and he panics – the walls cannot tremble, the walls cannot break, if the walls fall they will bury him, the roof will bury him, there will be no escape–

( _Bei mir bist du schoen, please let me explain._ )

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.” Dust and smoke and screaming and falling and–

(יעקוב יעקוב יעקוב _Eyn shprakh iz keyn eyn mal nisht genug. Baruch atah adonai eloheinu…_  יעקוב יעקוב יעקוב יעקוב יעקוב יעקוב)

“Shut up!” –screaming and its him, its him that's screaming, the walls are coming down and he cannot breathe for the dust –

( _Don't you worry about what the cost will be, because you'll have no say in the matter when the time comes._ )

“I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend.” – he cannot hear anything but the crashing, crumbling, thundering echo, cannot see but for the–

( _Obey_ )

( _Obey_ , יעקוב)

( _Lekhah dodi liqrat kallah p'ne Shabbat neqabelah._ )

( _Obey_ )

  
“You're my mission.” – the dust and smoke and acrid stench of burning plastic and burning oil –

( _Shema yisrael_ obey _adonai eloheinu_ obey obeyobeyobeydayenu)

“You're my mission!” – and falling concrete and steel and beams and charcoal and ash and beyond the walls there is – beyond the walls there is–

( _There weren't supposed to be any more miracles when the temple fell. Maybe this one slipped through._ )

“Then finish it. Cause I'm with you to the end of the line.” Beyond the fallen walls there is – light – beyond the walls there is light, golden sunlight – beyond the walls there is the sound of life and a city and people and – beyond the walls there is the smell of fresh air and rich loam and soft grasses and –

Beyond the walls there is –

( _I know, I know, Yaakov, I know. Bite, ikh hab dikh lib, ikh hab dikh lib.)_

_(I thought you were dead.)_

_(I'm so glad you're alive.)_

_(What you and Steven get up to is your own business.)_

Beyond the walls there is –

_(That kid from Brooklyn.)_

_(That kid from Brooklyn too dumb not to run away from a fight.)_

Beyond the walls there is –

יעקוב

_That Barnes kid from Bedford Avenue._

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2018 was whack. Start 2019 off right by leaving a comment. <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All Hebrew errors are my own fault. I apologize in advance for the Pesach music earworm.

*

 

He dives. Dives, until the water covers him completely.

_Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh haolam_

He stays down beyond the span of a breath, stays down until he has his quarry in his arms.

_asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al ha-t'vilah_

The river is dark and cold, loud and turbulent, filled with flaming debris, metal, hot oil, all churning and crashing and collapsing into the water. He doesn’t know why he expected differently. He doesn’t know why the water feels so wrong.

_Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam_

He reaches the surface, Steve clutched tightly in his arms, unresponsive – Steve, _Steve. Come on. You’re kind of missing the point of a double date. We’re taking the girls dancing_. He fights to swim, fights to keep Steve’s dead weight – _I thought you were dead. I thought you were smaller_ – afloat, fights to keep Steve’s head above – _You know I’m with you till the end of the line_ – water, he can’t tell if Steve is breathing but until he gets to the shore he can’t worry about that, can’t – _There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me._

_shehecheyanu,_

He swims towards the shore, struggling with the weight of his burden. He sinks underneath the strain once, then twice, making him fight for air, fight for clarity, fight for focus. _Get out of here – not without you._

_v'kiy'manu, v'higianu_

Then his feet touch soft river mud. He drags them both to the shore, letting the water take Steve’s weight until they reach the riverbank. _Not without you._ He watches Steve take a breath. _Not without you._  Watches the water drain from Steve’s lungs. _Not without you._

_la-z'man ha-zeh obey_

He is the Winter Soldier. _He is James Buchanan Barnes._ His mind is diseased and requires treatment. _His mind is his own._ He has no home. _His home is Brooklyn_. His mission is to fight Captain America. _His mission is to protect Steve Rogers._ He is meant to be the Fist of Hydra. _He is meant to be– he is meant to be– Not without you._

He watches Steve breathe – _This isn’t a back alley, why are you so keen to fight – you’re a punk – we looked for you after – eyn shprakh iz keyn eyn mal nisht genug – if you’re about to apologize, don’t – remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island – Ikh hab dikh lib, ikh hab dikh lib_ – and he doesn’t know anything, he doesn’t know anything but his mind is spinning – _obey_ – and this man, this man has torn down walls he didn’t think could be broken, this man has filled the silence – _obey –_ with sound, this man has erased the white and filled his entire vision with color and shape and movement and that is – that is–

He must obey. _He fucking must not_.

He turns and staggers away. Steve is breathing. Steve can take care of himself. Steve can wait until… until he has sorted through the ruins of his mind, the cascade of memory, of thought, of unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar emotions pouring through him. Until he understands who he is. Who Steve is. How they fit together. What the hell he’s supposed to _do_ when… when…

_What the hell happened to me?_

*

He follows his training. _You must not be seen_. Swaps out his waterlogged tactical gear for civilian clothing. _You must not be recognized_. Acquires food, water, cash. Sees a TV news station cycling through images of him on the bridge, on the street, zooming in on his metal arm. _You must be a ghost._  Keeps his hands in his jacket pockets as he walks.

_...Walking ten blocks to the men’s mikvah, his feet dragging as he takes in the tenements, the distant high rises, the voices arguing in Yiddish and Russian and Polish and English, the smell of bagels baking..._

When night falls, he steals a can of beige spray paint and uses it to disguise the arm as a more traditional, cosmetic prosthetic. _You are the Fist of Hydra._ If he uses it too much, the paint will chip off. But for now, it’s camouflage enough that people won’t immediately assume it to be an advanced military-grade weapon. _The Winter Soldier can only operate in anonymity._

Once the paint has dried, and he’s in a secure location, and he’s eaten enough to quiet the growling of his stomach, he lays down and gives in to his body’s demand for sleep.

_...He sleeps in and wakes up slowly, finding Steve wrapped around him, head tucked under his chin and legs tangled together beneath the blanket..._

He wakes up early, he wakes up and _no one is there_ , he wakes up alone for the first time he can ever remember, wakes up with the memory of burning, the memory of – _obey_ – screaming, the memory of – _your mind will continue to degrade without treatment_ – sparks flying from the machine over his head – _you must inform the Commander if your symptoms reemerge_ – as it rips and tears and erases and... and that’s not a treatment – _your mind is diseased_ – that’s not a treatment that’s a _violation_ , that’s _theft_ , that’s...

_He wakes up, and he’s strapped to a table, and there’s a needle in his arm, and there’s a doctor looking at him and asking him questions and he says… he says..._

– that’s _brainwashing_ , and they did it to him, and they did it for a long time, and they told him it was necessary, and they told him it was to make him functional, and they told him it was _his fault_ , and when his mind – _oh God_ – when his mind tried to question it, to break through, to _remember_ , he would _tell them about it_ so that they could make it _stop_ –

– _oh God_ – he did half their brainwashing for them just by _believing them_ – and now there are a thousand, a hundred-thousand memories flying at him from all – _obey_ – sides and he refuses to shove them down, refuses – _obey_ – to repress them, refuses to fight against them, refuses to – _obey_ – ignore them the way he was trained. He knows better, now.

He wakes up early, and he wakes up alone, and he closes his eyes and he opens his mind and he lets the memories come.

*

He wakes up.

He thinks there are words he is supposed to say upon waking. Words he took a long, long time to let go of. Words they fought hard to erase.

He can’t remember them, now.

He wonders if this means they won.

*

He needs to leave the city. He needs to disappear – _You cannot be seen_ – before Hydra finds him again, before the authorities track him down, before someone with the right knowledge and equipment can erase his repentance in a shower of sparks.

He needs to leave, but – there is an exhibit. At the Smithsonian – the one that's not on the National Mall – and it's about Captain America. Cap. Steve. _I'm with you to the end of the line._ Instead of taking him out of the city limits, his feet and his body and his heart lead him there, desperate to learn if everything he remembers – shul, Steve, his family, his Purple Heart – is true.

He’s not sure what he’ll do if it isn’t.

He gets to the exhibit and it’s… it’s not _Steve_. It’s not about Steve at all. Just a lot of American propaganda disguised as honor for an individual man, denying his faults _(stubborn, prideful, never lets anything go, never happy with where he was and what he had and who he had_ ), and omitting his very best features, the parts about him that made him different _(questioning everything, sarcastic as hell, gentle and compassionate and capable – when he allowed himself – of loving with his whole whole whole heart_ ), the parts about him that made him... perfect.

He doesn’t know why he’s so angry about that. Why he’s angry over a caricature of a man he barely remembers, a man he nearly killed, a man he pulled from the Potomac because… because… because _I’m with you till the end of the line_ means something to him, deep in his heart.

He wanders the exhibit, increasingly annoyed, until he reaches the panel about _him_ – about James Buchanan Barnes, about Sergeant Bucky Barnes, his face etched in glass ten feet high – and barely recognizes the man described.

It throws him for a second, throws his whole worldview off kilter, makes him believe for a moment that maybe he isn't who he thinks he is, that his memory has been manipulated far more than he knew. _Don't you worry about what the cost will be, because you'll have no say in the matter when the time comes. Come, give your father a kiss, then go get on your boat._

And then he realizes he's not the one in the wrong; the museum is, just like it’s wrong about _Captain America_ , about _Steve_.

He's Jewish, not Catholic. He's the oldest of two, not four. And he didn't compete in public school athletics – he went to yeshiva. _Miracles aren't supposed to happen anymore – we're the ones who are supposed to make the miracles happen._

It’s a relief, almost. To have been told so many wrong things for so long and believed them without a doubt, without a question. It’s a relief to look at that glass wall and think, _No, I’m right and this is wrong_. To be sure that the thoughts in his head are his own. Even if the thoughts are currently, _What a load of baloney._

In search of more details, he visits the Captain America section of the gift shop and flips through some of the books on the display case. The most recent academic work, published just this year, has an index in the back. He skims the short J section, and nothing. Nothing in S for synagogue, or Y for Yiddish. He flips reluctantly to the B's, and there, just beneath “Barnes, James Buchanan” and “Barnes family” is “Barnes Proctor, Rebecca.”

A flash. Graying hair. Wet, frightened hazel eyes. _There must be no witnesses._

_Shema… yisrael…_

He drops the book. Closes his eyes. Breathes. Bends down, picks the book back up, and flips to page 360.

“Mrs. Proctor, now a resident of Sarasota, Florida, has refused to provide public comments on her brother's legacy since the early 1970’s.”

_Rebecca Barnes Proctor._

_Rebecca Barnes._

_Becca._

_Come with me, Bucky, please – I’m so glad you’re alive – I’m not._

He places the book back on the table, and makes his way to the exit. He thinks… he thinks he has somewhere to be.

_Just come home with me, we know people, whatever you're mixed up in, we can help you –_

He thinks he has a promise to keep.

*

It takes a long time to walk from Washington, DC to Florida, even when you have more endurance and stamina than ten men put together, especially when you are trying to avoid the attention – _return to base,_ shut up – of the authorities, or worse, good Samaritans.

Outside of Greensboro, North Carolina, he makes camp at sunset in a large stand of trees beside a fallow cornfield, wrapping himself up in the blanket and tarp he scavenged on the way. He doesn't have wine. He doesn't have bread. He doesn't have candles. He doesn't remember the words or the songs or the motions. Just a sense… a sense that this day is different. A day to devote to rest. A day to devote to memory.

_I've been schlepping them back and forth all across Europe on the off chance you might get homesick and want to do shabbos._

In his sleep, he dreams of a woman, whose dress matches the fabric covering her hair, whose hands are sure and strong and and whose eyes are full of warmth and whose voice is… whose voice is…

_Lekhah dodi liqrat kallah p'ne Shabbat neqabelah._

He wakes up. His chest burns. His throat his tight. There is water on his face. He thinks he is…

_Oh, my boychik, vus macha da? Come sit with me and tell me about it..._

He thinks he is weeping.

*

A week later, he is on a beach just south – _return to base_ , not on your life, pal – of Savannah, Georgia. He doesn't have wine, or challah, or candles, or the memory of the words to the prayers he knows he heard every week his whole entire life.

_Aleinu le'shabeiach la'adon hakol, lateit gedulah leyotzeir bereshit._

The air off the ocean is cold, but the sun is bright and the waves are capped in white and the wind smells like salt and sand and spring and the sounds of a thousand shorebirds makes this so different from anything he thinks he's experienced in a very, very long time.

_Taking the train down to Coney Island, walking down along the boardwalk, sneaking down under the pier to… to..._

He spends the whole day right there. Listening. Breathing. Looking. Absorbing.

_We are commanded on Shabbat to observe and remember..._

Civilians walk by, one or two – _You must not be seen_ , too damn bad – at a time. Several of them jog, their clothes tight, water bottles in their hands. A middle aged man approaches him – eyes his cap, his sweatshirt, the stiff angle at which he's learned to hold his arm so that curious gazes quickly slide away with pity or awkwardness or guilt – and says, “Thank you for your service,” and hands him a can of beer out of the cooler he's carrying.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. He thinks he used to be charming. He thinks he used to like talking to people. He doesn’t remember how.

He stares out at the water. Remembers laying down on a rooftop, rifle set aside, because it was Friday evening and while he no longer knew why, he knew it was time to rest. Remembers coming out of cryo, coming out of the chair, asking what day it was, not knowing why it mattered but knowing that it _did._

And being told that he only _thought_ it mattered because his brain was fucked up. That he was wrong. _Your mind is diseased_ , what the hell does that even _mean_?

They changed him. They erased every part of him that wasn’t useful to Hydra. Anything they couldn’t erase, they ignored. And anything they couldn’t erase or ignore, they twisted to their own purposes. _Kill, and you will bring in an era of peace and order_ , they said. _Kill, and you will prevent a famine_ , they said. _Kill, and you will prevent a war_ , they said.

He was always protective – of Becca, of Steve, of his men. He never considered that it could be used against him. He wonders how many times he tried to escape, how many orders he ignored, how many of their own operatives he killed, before they realized that the only way they could make him obey was to make him think he was doing the right thing. Helping people. _Saving_ people.

 _Kill,_ they told him, _or there will be no bread._

The wind gusts. He wipes the water out of his eyes. Opens the beer can and takes a long, slow drink. It’s… it’s good.

It’s his.

*

He arrives in Sarasota on a Thursday, early in the afternoon. He follows signs directing him to the public library, and then it's the work of a few short minutes to find the current address of an elderly woman named Rebecca Barnes Proctor – a middle-aged woman with grey in her hair and steel in her eyes and steel against her neck – an adolescent girl in a dancing dress with a chip on her shoulder big enough to have its own zip code – a young child with ribbons in her hair and dimples in her cheeks and mischief in her smile – a newborn, wrapped in soft blankets, held oh-so-carefully in his skinny arms as he sings, “ _Ilu hotzianu mimitzrayim, v'lo asah bahem sh'fatim, dayeinu_ ,” entertaining the baby so that his mother can have–

He leaves the library with an address.

He takes the long way there.

*

She is in a home. _Assisted living_ , it's called. There are staff at the front entrance, and in the dining room, and in the halls. Becca's room is on the second floor. The temperature is mild, and her window is open.

When he steps silently over the windowsill and into the room, she is sitting in a cushioned reclining chair in front of a television set, its screen glowing blue before switching to focus on a man in a suit. There is a metal cane, four capped feet at its wide base, set next to the chair on the right-hand side.

She is not yet fully grey. Her hair still retains much of its color, the style short and curled. Her left hand lays quiet in her lap, while her right fidgets slightly on the armrest, tapping aimlessly. There is a plastic brace on her left leg. She is wearing sneakers. They are… he thinks the word is _fuchsia_. He doesn’t know why he knows it.

He glances around. Above the television is a shelf, crowded with tchotchkes and framed photos: young Becca in a wedding dress, young Becca with her husband, children by her side. A man and woman in their Friday best, flanked by a small girl with ruffles in her dress and pin curls in her bobbed hair, and a teenage boy, hair combed back from his forehead, smirk on his face – _because he'd been walking around on cloud nine all day, because the night before he had finally gotten up the guts to kiss Steve down beneath the pier at Coney Island, and Steve had kissed him back, and nothing on earth could possibly ruin–_

He clears his throat. The woman tilts her head a fraction, but doesn't turn to look at him. He tries, voice low and quiet, “Becca?”

“Hush,” she says, eyes still locked on the screen. “Jeopardy's on.”

Something on the television buzzes, and Becca snorts. Still not looking at him, she adds, “Grab the tin from the nightstand and come sit down, for Pete's sake.”

He does as he's told, taking the second padded chair and prying off the lid from the tin. There are small, round cookies inside, held in little tissue paper cups, smelling of sugar and butter.

Becca reaches her right hand toward him, palm up, eyes still locked on the television screen. She gestures, opening and closing her fingers impatiently. It takes him a moment to realize, and then he places two cookies in her hand. She gestures again, testing the weight. She leaves her hand out. He adds two more cookies. She smiles, satisfied, and brings her hand back to her own lap.

He tries a cookie. It's good.

They sit like that, watching the trivia television show and emptying the tin together, until the top of the hour, when the credits roll across the screen, and Becca shuts off the whole thing with a click of the remote control.

“Becca,” he tries again. “Do you…. do you know me?”

She glances at him and snorts. “Oh, you're one to talk!”

“Becca…” he says. He trails off. He doesn't know what to say to her. _It will be over soon, I promise, fervently._

She shakes her head, tsking at herself, and says, “You know, it occurs to me I should have included a time frame in your promise to come home. This is ridiculous.”

_She saw him during a mission. She followed him into an alley. He pushed her against a wall. He drew his knife. He nearly killed her. He nearly killed her. He nearly killed her._

“I'm sorry,” he says. His voice doesn’t sound right, cracking under the words. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I almost–”

“I never told, you know. That I saw you,” she says, cutting off his inadequate apologies. She is looking at him, now. Her eyes are still hazel, still steel. “Not even Steve, when he showed up a few years ago. He probably could have gotten you out of there sooner if I had.”

_You're a witness. You're a loose end. If they find out you have seen me, they will kill you._

_Forget this. Forget me. If you talk. They will know. And then they will send me to kill you._

He closes his eyes in gratitude to Becca's stubbornness, the chip on her shoulder and the trust that she always gave him, even when he was very nearly her killer.

“Thank you,” he says roughly. She is alive. She stayed alive this whole time because she listened. That is worth seventy more years with Hydra, his baby sister is alive and looking at him and–

She waves him off. “Bite me, as my grandchildren like to say. Seventy years, and all I– _oh, Bucky_.”

He is weeping again.

He is weeping again because so much has changed, the world has moved on without him, and he is looking at his old, old, little sister and seeing the person she was, in her very center, and always has been and always will be and she is no different now than the last time he held her in his arms. He is weeping because he has missed so much, and oh God, he didn’t know it but he _missed her_ , and now she is right here in front of him again, and–

“Oh, come here, you big idiot,” she says, opening wide with her right arm. He goes to his knees in front of her chair, lets himself be pulled onto her shoulder and embraced like a lost thing, newly found.

“Honestly, what would Ma say?” she asks, rubbing circles onto his back _just like Ma did_.

He gasps in a breath, because he knows, he knows, “She'd tell me to cry on her shoulder till I felt ready to face the world, and not a moment before.”

Becca squeezes him tighter. “Well, get a move on, then. I don’t have all night.”

When he has made the collar of her sweater completely damp, many minutes later, he pulls away slowly, eyes and heart tender.

“Sorry,” he says again.

She pulls a tissue out of the cuff of her sweater and wipes at his face, exactly like Ma used to do, if perhaps not quite as gently. “Yaakov, I have children. I have grandchildren. That is not the worst thing I have had on _this very_ _blouse_.”

She points him at a sink in the corner of the room, where he washes his face and blows his nose and takes a good long drink of water. When he's put himself a little bit back together and come back to sit down again, she asks, “Better?”

He nods.

She takes that as permission to start the serious conversation, the one where he’ll have to find a way to give answers to questions he still doesn't understand, to give insights in the timeline of a life he doesn't quite remember living.

Or at least, that's what he expects.

What he doesn't expect is for Becca to say, “I've been waiting for you to show up for nearly three weeks, you know. Ever since I saw you on the news.”

“You saw– do people know who I am?” he asks. _You can only operate in anonym_ – STOP _._

“I can't speak for Hydra, God knows I wouldn't want to,” she says, disdain in her voice. “I don't know who Steve has told, and I know better than to try and speak for that idiot, either. But they showed photos of you, masked, on the news. I knew that it was you, of course.”

“How?” he asks.

“Do you remember when you saw me, in 1973?”

“I remember I nearly killed you,” he says. He bows his head. “I'm sorr–”

“If you're going to apologize every other sentence, we'll be up all night, and I've got a 9:30 bedtime,” she says, cutting him off with a wave of her hand. “Needless to say, I knew it was you. Which made it very difficult to act surprised when Steve called me a few days later to tell me you were alive and a prisoner of Hydra. Thank God he was so fershimelled, he would have caught me out first thing if he'd been paying attention.”

“Steve called you?” he asks.

She gives him a look filled with meaning, direct from 1941. “Of _course_ Steve called me, boychik. He has me on _speed dial._ He warned me you might be dangerous, that you might not remember who you are.”

She holds his eye for a long, serious moment. Then she snorts again, “That idiot. If me saying the Shema was enough to bring you back to yourself in ‘73, then Steve saying, well, _anything_ would be more than sufficient, I’d imagine.”

He doesn't feel quite as amused by the story as she obviously is, isn’t so sure that he’s _come back to himself_ in any significant way.

“I'm not– I'm not dangerous,” he says slowly, searching for the right words, the way to explain the mess of his head, too many memories to sort through and not enough context to judge them by, and the pervading sense that he _should have fought harder._ “But I– there's a lot I don't, I don't remember. I don't remember a lot of who– who I was. Just, just what they made me into and I can't get that out of my… out of my head, Becca.”

His voice breaks on her name. He looks down, at where the paint is chipping off his metal fingers. He's going to have to apply another coat soon.

She combs her fingers through his hair once, twice, and hums at him in thought. “Yaakov, you escaped from Hydra on April 22nd. Do you know what day that was?”

He shakes his head lightly. She places a finger under his chin and tilts his face up to look at her. “It was the last day of Pesach.”

He sucks in a sharp breath – _Ilu hotzianu mimitzrayim, v'lo asah bahem sh'fatim_  – and she smiles at him. “I'm not saying that means something, but I think that means something.”

She strokes his head again, and sits quietly while he spends some more quality time with his handful of tissues, and he is so, so grateful.

_Baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech haolam…._

At nine, she uses her cell phone to call the hotel down the road, weaving a tale of her poor grandson Jacob, a disabled veteran, travelling all the way here to visit her only to be mugged right outside her door, what has the neighborhood come to, a person can't walk around in broad daylight without losing their luggage and wallet to thieves, could they be so kind as to reserve a room for him under her name with her credit card? Oh, she is so grateful, bless their hearts, things have been so difficult since she had the stroke and moved into the home, she doesn't have anything she could lend him so if they could supply him with some extra toiletries as well, oh you're such a mensch...

“And you said you were a terrible liar,” he says after she hangs up.

“I said _Steve_ could catch me. Not that anyone else could,” Becca says haughtily. She slides a slim piece of plastic out of her phone case and hands it to him. “Here's my card. Get yourself some dinner and some nice things to wear to temple tomorrow. You're picking me up here at six.”

He frowns, stomach tightening. _They will make me kill you, and they will think it’s funny._ “I don’t know if I really should, Becca–”

“Stop panicking and start acting,” she says sternly, tapping him on the nose with the credit card. “If you wanted to be coddled you would have gone to Steve. You came to me, which means what you really want is a kick in the ass.”

It’s almost enough to make him smile. “Alright, Becca. Whatever you say.”

“Alright then,” she says, sounding just like their Da for a moment. “Come, give your baby sister a kiss, then go get on your way.”

He presses his lips to her forehead, like he’s done ten thousand times since he was ten years old and finally, finally an older brother.

She says, “I feel it might be bad luck to make you promise to come back.”

He smiles. It very nearly doesn't hurt. He leaves without another word.

*

When he returns the next evening, he is showered, brushed, shaved, and properly clothed in a button-down and slacks from a store near his hotel. He signs in at the front desk as Jacob Barnes, the name both familiar and not, heavy in his mouth but light in his heart. _If I said the name James Buchanan Barnes, that would mean nothing_ – fuck off, asshole.

Becca gives a wolf whistle when he appears at her door, and says, “You look almost all right.”

“Shut up, _Grandma_ ,” he says, and offers her his arm, which she immediately swats.

At Temple, he's introduced around as her cousin's son, finally down for a visit after a rough couple of years. They sit up near the front, Becca's cane tucked between their seats, and she holds his hand through the whole service, tugging him up when it's time to stand and squeezing when it's time to bend his knees and pulling him down when it's time to sit again. He follows along, and he listens, but–

The melodies have changed.

The melodies have changed – of course the melodies have changed, it's been 70 years since he last went to temple, they're allowed to write new music for ancient words if that's what makes them happy, but–

The shema is the same.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

His breath hitches.

He remembers saying it when he was strapped to the table, every table. He remembers saying – _shut him up_ – it when they tortured him, saying it – _bite down on this_ – when they started using – _the treatments are necessary_ – the procedures, the electricity, the… the wipe. The tank.

He remembers wanting to say it, and not remembering the words. Wanting to say something but not remembering what. And then just wanting. And then nothing, nothing but…. the white, silent room where they made him live.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

They took it away. They took _this_ away. Took away everything he loved, everything he believed, everything that made him who he was, until all he had left were the things they allowed him to keep: his skills, his drive, his obedience.

_Obey._

They took away _this._

He wants, suddenly, desperately, to take it _back._

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

*

After services are over, and he's pulled himself together as much as he possibly can with the help of Becca’s sleeve full of tissues, they don't immediately leave. No, Becca takes him by the hand and leads him, slowly, leaning on her cane, down the hallway to the Rabbi's office.

He stalls at the doorway. He doesn’t know why. _What would your rabbi say, to hear you reject your beloved Zion?_ Becca gives him a tug, and the rabbi waves at him in welcome, and then, well, he has to go inside, doesn't he?

“Shabbat shalom,” Rabbi Linda says. She is in her sixties, with mousy brown hair cut in short layers. She has taken off her tallit, but kept a small, lace kippa pinned to the crown of her head. “I heard Becca’s cousin was visiting, welcome.”

“Oh, that's just a story I told the others,” Becca says airily, covering the silence where he was supposed to respond to the greeting. “This is my brother, Bucky.”

The rabbi's eyebrows go up. “I think you're going to have to explain a bit more.”

“You're just saying that because I've had four strokes.”

“Yes, I am,” Rabbi Linda says.

He sits quietly, on a faded flowered couch, reading the titles of the books squashed into the bookcases along the adjacent wall and trying not to listen to his own history as Becca explains – some of which he's told her, a lot more that she's obviously figured out for herself since last night, since 1973, since 1945. _Hydra had him, got into his head, made him forget himself and believe what they wanted–_

Becca pulls up pictures on her phone and shows them to the rabbi, pulls up video, and then says, “Show her your arm, Bucky.”

He flinches, coming back to himself from somewhere far away, somewhere white and silent and cold, to see Becca and Rabbi Linda staring at him. _What do they– oh._

He unbuttons the top four buttons of his shirt, enough so that he can pull it aside, off his shoulder, displaying the gleaming metal, the scars, the way the prosthetic meets his flesh in a never-ending battle of gross invasion and Hydra-infused healing. _It is truly a remarkable subject_.

Rabbi Linda makes a noise, deep in her throat, that reminds him of– _of the time he dragged Steve home, arm broken and swollen, because some bully hadn't liked something Steve said and decided to make a point out of that fact, and Ma had taken one look at the injury and said– and said to him–_

Rabbi Linda doesn't say anything to him. She just shakes her head and says, “Only you, Becca. Only you.”

Then she picks up the phone – _is she calling the police? Is she calling the Army? Is she calling Steve?_ – but no, she's calling, she's calling a... a shelter, she's finding him a place to stay, where he can eat and sleep and bathe and think without running up Becca's credit card, or sleeping in the woods or under bridges or...

He redoes the button on his shirt, fingers awkward and fumbling, and then folds them into his lap. He goes back, in his mind, back to that _somewhere else_ that is silent and cold and frightening and safe and–

There's a moment of quiet once Rabbi Linda ends the call. Then she says, “Becca, could Bucky and I have a few minutes alone, please?”

Becca doesn't budge. Not until he nods, giving her permission to go. She says, “Don't flirt with the rabbi, Yaakov,” and then she's out the door, closing it quietly behind her. He hears her sit down on the padded bench just outside the door, just on the other side of the wall. Inches away.

“That's food and lodging taken care of,” Rabbi Linda says. “I'm sure Becca will insist on covering other incidentals until you're back on your feet.”

Bucky nods again, but says nothing. He can't – two nights ago he was sleeping on the side of the road, three weeks ago he was frozen in the tank, and now, now he has a bed and a room of his own and his body is free but his mind is drowning in memories, in images of love and pain and anger and helplessness, his mind yearns to go back to the white and the cold and the silence where everything hurt but at least he didn’t know _why_ it hurt, but he can't, he can't – _obey, forget, obey,_ no, no I won’t, never again –

“So that just leaves your spirit,” Rabbi Linda continues, like she can see on his face all his churning, swirling, stinging tendrils of thought. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m–” He thinks he's lied to a rabbi before, but he can't now, there's too much, too much to hold onto to care about pride or shame. He looks down at his hands, loose and aimless in his lap. _You are the Fist of –_ no, I’m not.  “I’m not doing so well.”

“Do you feel that you are a danger to others?” she asks quietly, no judgment in her tone. He shakes his head, and she asks, “Do you feel you are a danger to yourself?”

That stops him short. A danger to himself? What would he do to stop the memories, stop the confusion…. Stop the walls from closing in again around him? “I don't– I don't know. Not right now but– I don't know how I’ll feel tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, he might wake up and feel ready to take on the world, his mind, the traps his captors laid for him inside his every thought. Tomorrow, he might wake up and want to go back to sleep, nevermind Becca, nevermind Steve, nevermind anyone or anything. _Return to base_ – no – _obey_ – fuck off – _obey, forget, obey –_

It scares him.

She nods firmly, like she understands, like she has walked these roads before and knows every twist and turn and meandering detour. “You have been through a trauma. It's over now, but it has had an effect on you, and you need to find ways of dealing with that. Do you want some suggestions?”

“I'm all ears, Rabbi,” he says. In the old days, it would have been a drawl. Today, it’s nowhere near convincing. The attempt still makes her smile.

“I would like to meet with you once a week. You can come see me whenever you want, unless I'm already with another congregant, but we should have a regular, set time to talk.”

“Am I going back to Hebrew school?” he asks.

“If that's what you need, then yes,” she says. “Establishing a set routine can be very helpful, so I want to see you at Friday night services, and Saturday Torah study. And you'll keep whatever commitments Becca asks of you, as well.”

There's a knock on the wall that makes them both jump. Becca calls, “I'm free for lunch on Wednesdays!”

“You know,” Rabbi Linda says thoughtfully, “when I first met her, she told me she was hard of hearing.”

Bucky smiles for the first time all day. He whispers, conspiratorially, “I think she's lying about the four strokes.”

There's another knock on the wall, this one sounding distinctly annoyed.

Rabbi Linda laughs, and gets up out of her seat, extending her hand for him to shake. He takes it, and she cups his in both of hers, gently. “We have a good community here, Bucky. There is so much we have been through, but we made it out by joining hands and moving forward together. I believe you can do that, too.”

The sincerity in her voice and in her eyes makes him have to look away. He looks at their hands. She has not yet let go.

He was alone, from the moment his hands slipped from the side of the train, on the table and in the chair and in the tank, they built that cold white silent hell and abandoned him to it. For seventy years, he was alone.

He was alone, and then the walls of his mental prison cracked when Becca said the Shema. They crashed down when Steve said, _Till the end of the line_. And here, now, to help him pick up the pieces, to build something new, he has Becca, and Rabbi Linda, and a congregation, and a shelter, and...

 _Joining hands and moving forward together_.

Maybe, maybe, they can help him make the repairs to his soul that he cannot do alone. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

“Thank you,” he says.

*

He settles into a furnished private room at the shelter that night. There are sheets on the bed. A lamp on the nightstand. Curtains across the window. The walls are painted a soft green, the open window lets in a warm Florida breeze, and the chatter of the other shelter residents leaks in from the common area in a low, rumbling patter.

He lays down, closes his eyes, and tries to rest.

*

In his dreams, the hand holding the knife doesn't hesitate.

_Obey._

In his dreams, he raises his metal fist and he strikes, strikes, strikes.

_Obey._

In his dreams, he is obedient.

_You are the Fist of Hydra._

_Forget._

_Obey._

*

He wakes up, exhausted and feeling as though he is missing something, something important.

He walks to the temple. He focuses on the early morning Gulf breeze brushing his face, the way it smells of salt and water and warmth. He focuses on the Florida sunlight, lightening the sky further and further as the minutes pass, heating the back of his neck as he walks.

At temple, as Jacob Barnes, he eats his bagel and schmear and drinks his coffee and listens to two old, old men – born fifteen years after him – argue over the Hebrew translation of the first word in this week's Torah portion. Their voices are thick with New York vowels and for a moment, it could be shul circa 1940, Eli's two grandfathers dueling over Torah in lieu of family politics and–

“See you Tuesday?” Rabbi Linda asks him at the end.

“Tuesday,” he agrees. It is the first thing he's said all morning.

*

Rabbi Linda talks to him, and gives him books to read when talking hurts and his brain feels like it's spinning in all directions, like it wants to go back to the quiet, horrifying peace of the white room.

He reads Eli Wiesel and Harold Kushner.

He reads Primo Levi and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

He says, “I feel like I _am_ back at yeshiva.”

Becca says, “Good God, that's depressing. You're coming over tonight, _The Producers_ is on at six.”

He watches _The Producers_ , and he wonders what it says about him that he _laughs_ , that he laughs anyway, that after everything he can sit there and hum along with “Springtime for Hitler” and laugh like it wasn't real, like it didn't happen, like it's all a joke.

“I think it means you're human,” Rabbi Linda says, later, when he asks. “I think it means they didn't win, that you can look at a parody of them and find yourself able to laugh.”

*

He tells Becca about Steve. About attacking him, shooting him, punching him in the face over and over until he bled. About the things that Steve said, about “Till the end of the line,” about falling and diving and reaching and grasping and pulling and kicking and dragging and dropping and leaving, leaving because he was so, so afraid of what staying might mean.

“Steve gave you such a run-around when you were kids, either hot or cold depending on the day. It drove Ma crazy to watch it happen, and know you were always going to be stuck on him,” is what Becca says. “I'm not surprised your first instinct was to get some space from him to figure yourself out. I would have done the same thing ”

“That's not reassuring,” he says, and she smacks him on the arm. He swallows thickly. Confesses, “I think I miss him.”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course you do. Needing space from him doesn't mean you don't love him.”

He looks at her. “Do you think I– I still do?”

“Oh, Bucky,” she sighs. She passes him the new tin of cookies.

*

He tells Rabbi Linda about the doctors. About the machine. About the training, the missions, the Commanders, _obey_ and _forget_ and _return to base_ and _wipe him_ and _Sunday_ and _You will help bring about a new world order_ and _Millions will starve_ and _You must resist these thoughts_ and _Leave no witnesses_.

He tells her about the dreams. How his mind sometimes, all on its own, drifts back into that white, silent room, and maybe he hates it and maybe it feels like coming home.  How his training still dominates his thoughts, the urge to not be seen, to return to base, to lay down and obey, that he has to fight, fight, fight against until he’s too exhausted to care one way or another.

He tells her about the hole in his mind in the exact shape of his morning prayers; that waking up just feels like a reminder of all he’s lost.

Finally, finally, he tells her about the empty synagogue. About the long, dark months on the Western front, about Gabe and the grave and the candles and Steve, about the paintings, about the broken doors, about the ark lying open and empty and the Torah scroll long, long disappeared.

“A lot of those Torah scrolls _were_ lost when the Nazis came,” Rabbi Linda confirms.

Then she says, “But many were also hidden away and kept safe, or transported to England or the US, or later to Israel.”

She looks at him steadily for a long moment. She says, “And some _were_ taken by the Nazis. Locked away in basements and vaults as trophies of war, meant to be kept from us, never to be read from again.”

She leans forward. “But we keep finding them. These little troves of Torahs. And we recover them, we repair them, we restore them, and we bring them back into our communities, to be used again in the way they were intended. The Torah from your temple could very well be one of those, could be somewhere in the world being read from this Shabbat.”

“How can they–” his breath hitches. It’s not the _same_. Being locked in a basement isn’t the same as the tank, as the chair, as the silent screaming room. “Scrolls don't have memories, scrolls don't feel pain, scrolls don't sleep and… and scrolls can't be used to hurt or kill so how, I know what you're saying but how could that possibly apply to me, too?”

“The point isn't about what you did or how well you sleep,” Rabbi Linda says. “Just as the point also isn't about removing mildew from your pages or re-inking your faded letters.”

“Then what's the point?” he asks tiredly. He is so, so tired these days, like his body was awake the whole long century and is just now realizing it.

“That you are more than what was done to you,” she says plainly. She lets the moment sit, gives it time to sink into his thoughts and his heart and it can't be that simple, it can't, it can't. Every waking minute, every dreaming moment, all he can think about is what he did, what was done to him, there _is_ nothing else.

What more is there to him than this?

Rabbi Linda shakes her head, like she sees the question in his mind and thinks, once again, that he’s missing the point. She says, “We, the Jewish people, are more than what happened to us during the war. It still hurts us, yes, but it doesn't define us.”

She puts her hand on his, gently. She does not seem to mind the metal. She says, “It was not the end of our story, and _this_ is not the end of yours.”

*

On Friday night, Rabbi Linda calls him up to the bimah to do aliyah, and she calls him “Yaakov bar George v'Yocheved,” and he's on his feet before he knows it, and he's walking up the steps and he's walking up to the Torah, like he did when he was thirteen and eighteen and twenty-five, and he presses the tassels of his tallit to the scroll and kisses them, and his voice is clear when he chants,

בָּרְכוּ אֶת-יְיָ הַמְבֹרָךְ

and the congregation smiles at him and the congregation chants back,

בָּרְכוּ אֶת-יְיָ הַמְבֹרָךְ לְעולָם וָעֶד

and he stays there as Mr. Meyer reads the Parshat R'eih, and he listens to the words and watches the letters on the Torah as they take form in his ears, speaking of identity, of community, of recovery, of moving forward toward the Promised Land but still to _Bear in mind that you were slaves in the land of Egypt,_ and he thinks,

יעקוב

and he thinks,

_Bucky_

and he thinks

_James Buchanan Barnes_

and he thinks,

_I am, what I will be._

*

Bucky meets with Rabbi Linda on Tuesdays. Bucky takes Becca to lunch on Wednesdays.  Bucky takes Becca to temple on Fridays. Bucky goes to Torah Study on Saturdays.

Bucky volunteers at the shelter, helping to haul the laundry and clean the bathrooms and mop the kitchen floor, and no one asks him where he's from or where his papers are.

On nights he can't sleep, Bucky climbs out his bedroom window to avoid disturbing the other shelter residents and walks barefoot along the beach, listening to the waves and feeling the foam curl around his ankles before always, always, always pulling back.

He finds himself starting to miss New York. Not the clawing, grasping, choking desperation he used to feel when he thought about _home,_ about Bedford Avenue in 1941. More the feeling, deep inside, that he _prefers_ the cramped, bustling metropolis over this quiet beach town, that he _prefers_ the change of the seasons and the impending chill in the air over a climate perpetually 75 and sunny.

Maybe the city, like Becca, has grown and transformed and aged in myriad visible and invisible ways, but at its heart, at its core, is still solidly of the same character.

Maybe he – no matter how he has been changed and transformed and modified and bulldozed and annexed and reconstructed brick by brick – is still, at his center, himself.

He thinks he wants to go to New York. He thinks he wants to find out if both of these things can be true.

*

Bucky takes Becca to lunch. She makes him order a side of vegetables to go with his sandwich and fries, and steals the latter off his plate one at a time when she thinks he’s not looking.

When their plates have been taken away, and they’re sipping their (decaf) coffees as they wait for two slices of pie to arrive, he asks, “Ma and Da. Aunt Maryam. Your friend Louise. What… what happened to them?”

Becca sets her coffee mug down gently on its saucer. She looks at him evenly. “I’m not doubting you, but are you sure you’re ready to know, Yaakov?”

“That sounds a little bit like doubt,” Bucky says, and she shrugs one shoulder guilelessly. “Yes, I– yes. I want to know. The parts of the story that I’m missing because I missed them, not because I forgot. Will you tell me?”

“Only because I like you,” Becca says, and she ignores his mumbled _Could’a fooled me_ , and she tells him.

*

Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe sneak up on him. They make it through the first storms of the season, and Bucky lends a hand hauling debris off the roof of the shelter, out of the landscaping surrounding the assisted living center, off the beach where he takes his walks. He eats dinner with Becca one of those evenings, when his right hand is sore and his thighs ache from crouching down and standing up a thousand times over the course of the day, and she says, “You can pick me up at nine tomorrow. I want to get there early to make sure I get a good seat. I have your ticket.”

Bucky pauses, flips through the calendar in his head and realizes it's the 24th of September. He says, “I'll have to iron my shirt tonight.”

“Ironing will not make that shirt any better,” Becca decrees. “But yes, please iron it.”

On the way home, he stops at a store that doesn't have the word “mart” in its name, and he buys a dress shirt that won't make his sister tease him.

She teases him anyway.

*

That Tuesday, in the middle of the High Holy Days, Bucky thinks about how far he's gone – seventy years from the time where he belongs, a thousand miles from when he walked out of the river to freedom – and he thinks, too, about how far he's come. Like the mildew washed off the parchment, the stitches between the sheets repaired, the letters re-inked and crisp and bold and shining brightly from the page.

What happened to him will always be there. But that is not his sin to repent.

“I think I want to go to the mikvah,” he tells Rabbi Linda. “Is that something people still do?”

Linda's eyebrows rise. It's rare for him to state a desire so plainly. Bucky thinks he likes the freedom in doing so. He should do it more often.

“There are a few formal mikvot in the area,” Rabbi Linda says. “But personally, I prefer to use the ocean.”

“Really?” he asks.

She shrugs. “It's the most naturally flowing water there is, isn't it? But if you like the formal mikvah experience, I can–”

“No,” Bucky says. “Sorry, but. No, I like– I like that.”

One of the tchotchkes on Becca's shelf is a stone engraved with the words, _The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea_. Becca said a friend bought it for her from a pretentious gift store, that it was incredibly bougie and trite– but she kept it, and she looks at it often, and…. Well, he's certainly been sweating from all the after-storm clean-up, and he's cried more in the past few months than he ever remembers before the war, and he still walks on the beach more nights than not, but maybe, maybe it's time to go in.

*

Bucky takes Becca to services on Erev Yom Kippur. They sing the Kol Nidre,

_Ohr zaroo-ah latzadeek u-l’yishrei lave simchah_

and Becca holds his hand,

_ahl da’at hamakom vee-al da’at hakahal_

and Becca leans her head on his shoulder,

_beesheevah shel ma’alah u-beesheevah shel matah_

and Bucky tilts his head just so, to rest his cheek against her forehead,

_ah-noo mahteereen l-hitpalel bayn ha-abaryaneem_

and maybe it feels like 1936, and Becca is a little girl and Bucky is a young man…

_kol nidrei, veh-essaray, u-sh’vooh-ay_

…but it also feels like 2014, and Becca is an old woman and Bucky is still a young man, and that's okay, it's okay that they've turned out like this. It's okay that Bucky has lived a handful of days over the past seventy years while Becca had to live each and every single one. It's okay that Bucky took a screaming, terrifying shortcut to the future while Becca got to relax and enjoy the journey, but had to make it alone.

_vacharamay, vih-konamay, vih-cheenooyay, vih-keenoosay, dindahrnah_

Bucky tucks his arm around his sister, and sings.

That night, when the boardwalk has emptied of late-season tourists and the moon has risen and the tide has come in, Bucky walks to the beach. He undresses, folds his clothes neatly into a pile on the sand next to his towel. He pulls out his hair tie and runs his fingers through his hair, until it's loose and comfortable over his shoulders.

He turns to face the ocean, watches the breakers creep up onto the sand. The wind is steady, and the low waves form white crets on the surface of the water.

He takes a deep breath. Breathes out. Thinks of the words he's been drafting in his mind all week. He breathes, and then recites his intentions. “As I immerse myself in the water, let me be open to the possibility of forgiveness.”

His breath catches. He straightens his shoulders, tilts his chin up. Strengthens his voice to say, “Let this moment mark my intention to forgive myself, and to let others forgive me.”

He walks down the slow slope of sand to the water. It's a lot more than seven steps. There's no subway tile, no handrail, no spigot, no drain.

There's no white. No silence. No walls.

It's just him, and the water, and the whole world underneath his feet.

When he's in far enough that the water reaches mid-chest and he can easily float if he tries, he stops.

He says,

_Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu, melech ha’olam asher kidshanu bi-t’vilah b’mayyim hayyim._

He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and sinks down until the water covers him completely.

The waves roll over him, pushing his body back and forth, and he can hear their crashing, churning sound even underwater. He stays down for what would be the span of a breath, letting the roar and the action and the feeling of _alive_ seep into his skin, his heart, his mind.

He lets the air out of his lungs. Lets go of seventy years of agony: of obedience, of compliance, of the twisting of his moral compass to point wherever his Commanders wanted, of losing himself and those he loves for so long he might never get any of it back…

He lets it all out, until his heart and his soul feel as awake and active and alive as the water surrounding him.  
  
Then he rises back up and takes a new, fresh breath, and says:

_V’al kulam, Elohai s’lichot, s’lach lanu, m’chal lanu, kapeir lanu._

_(For all my wrongs, O God of forgiveness, forgive me, wipe the slate clean, grant me atonement.)_

For the final immersion, he covers his eyes with his right hand, and he can't help but smile with his whole heart as he says,

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

*

Rabbi Linda makes phone calls, and then a few more phone calls, and then she says, “I found a place for you to stay in Brooklyn, provided you're alright with having to schlep a ways to the nearest subway stop.”

“I think I can manage that,” he says.

She hands him an envelope. Inside are a Social Security card and a Florida State driver's license. The name reads, _Jacob Elijah Barnes._

“You've been spending too much time with my sister,” he says, rolling his eyes at the joke. _We’re always waiting for Elijah to return._

Rabbi Linda smiles. “I probably should have asked, first– you _can_ drive, can't you?”

“I guess there's only one way to find out,” he says. He smiles again. It has gotten easier.

Then he takes her hand. He meets her eyes. He says, “Thank you. For everything.”

“I hope you find what you're looking for in New York,” she says. “But I hope you’ll also remember that you always have a home here, too.”

*

Becca insists on taking him shopping before he leaves, “Because if I don't, your wardrobe will scare Steve off before you've said two words to him.”

“You don't– you don’t think Steve will be scared of me, do you?” Bucky asks timidly.

Becca stops. She turns. She stares at him. She says, “You're not funny, and you're not fooling anybody.”

Bucky grins.

*

After the nearly three weeks it took him to walk from DC to Sarasota, the 18-hour bus ride to New York City feels impossibly fast.

But he thinks he's ready.

It takes a couple weeks of poking around Brooklyn, venturing out from his new room at a new shelter in the old Jewish section of the borough, to find Steve. And of course, when he does, it's at Friday night services at a little temple prominently displaying a rainbow flag on the front gate.

He slips inside just after services have started and takes a seat a few rows behind Steve, who has placed himself two-thirds of the way back, on the far right next to the aisle. He's wearing a kippa that's dark blue, and embroidered with the tree of life in silver thread.

Bucky follows along with the service, singing _Lecha dodi_ and all the rest, and he sees the exact moment that Steve hears him and realizes he's there: his head lifts, alert and on guard, while at the same time, his shoulders relax and drop a good two inches. But he doesn't turn around to look, not once.

Afterward, Steve loiters by the front gate with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders back up around his ears, like he's nervous, like he's worried. Bucky steps outside, sees him, and walks over.

“Steven bar Yusef v'Sarah,” Bucky says, from two feet away. He tries not to stare, to focus so much on Steve’s eyes, Steve’s expression, Steve’s entire _presence_ , and the way Bucky’s body wants to drift even closer, to soak in his warmth through full body contact.

He stays still. He’s not sure how Steve would react – how _he_ would react.

Steve’s face breaks into that little half-smile he does when his face isn't sure whether he should be smiling or wincing. He says, “Yaakov bar George v'Yocheved. Ikh hab dikh lang nisht gezen.”

 _It's been a long time._ Yes, Steve. It really, really has.

“Vi geyt es?” Steve asks.

“Es geyt gut,” Bucky confirms; yes, he's alright.

He gives up trying to say anything more, trying to resist the urge to stare. For all that Bucky had thought all summer about what he wants to say to Steve, what he _wants_ from Steve, now that he's here in front of him all he can do is stand silently and _look_.

Steve, who sat next to him at the Barnes’ shabbos dinner table whenever his mother had to work a Friday night.

Steve, who followed Bucky to school and to shul and to the dark quiet places under the pier and to an apartment in the queer part of Brooklyn and to the center of a goddamn war zone and into the very jaws of death – anywhere he thought Bucky might be.

Bucky raises his hand – slowly – and brushes a finger down a small scar next to Steve’s lip that was a ragged gash the last time he looked. He says, “I'm sorry for punching you. And for all the rest.”

Steve, who stopped breathing the moment Bucky touched his skin, releases a ragged breath. “I, um–”

Their eyes meet, for just a moment, and then Steve is the one who looks away, first.

Bucky takes a step back.

Steve's hands twitch, like they want to hold or hit or both or neither. Steve says, “If I don't forgive you now, will you come back next week to try again?”

Bucky huffs. He takes another step backward. Steve is so... so clamped down, he's repressed his emotions so hard Bucky can't get a good read on him at all. It’s 1940 all over again, but worse. Does Steve want to hug him? Punch him? Arrest him? What happened to the end of the line?

He shakes his head, and turns to go. “Shabbat shalom, Steve.”

Behind him, Steve echoes the sentiment – but doesn’t follow him.

When he gets back to his room and makes his nightly phone call to Becca, she asks, “That's it? All that build-up and that was it? The same complete and utter failure to communicate that you had in 1942?”

“C’mon, Becca, it’s–”

“Ugh, I hope I have another stroke tonight and forget this entire conversation,” she says, and then hangs up on him.

*

He goes to a different temple the following week, one with an earlier start time. He gets out of services and makes it to the corner by Steve's shul just in time to watch Steve leave – alone, hands back in his pockets, head down like he's back to being five foot nothing and ashamed of it.

Clearly, Steve wasn't planning some kind of sting to arrest him at services. But. Even after everything, even after nearly three seasons away from Hydra, safely ensconced in family and community, recovered and recovering – part of Bucky is still a little paranoid about being brought in by Captain America.

It's not _Captain America_ sadly kicking a stone down the sidewalk, though. That's all Steve.

The next week, he slips into the seat next to Steve before services start, and whispers, “Sorry.”

“You had to be sure I wouldn't bring a SWAT team with me, I know,” Steve replies, voice even. “It’s fine. I take it I pass muster?”

“You're alright,” Bucky says.

After, when they're back to standing outside the gate like two aimless souls who don't know which direction to start walking, Bucky breaks the awkward silence to ask, “Why do you go to services?”

“Why do you?” Steve counters, eyebrows raised.

Bucky looks at the doors of the temple for a long while. Finally, he says, “Because it matters.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. His voice is still that same, even tone. The one he uses when he doesn’t want his emotions to make a damn peep. “It does.”

Bucky nods. A car passes by with a beat-up muffler that would have drowned out their words if they'd had any. Bucky wonders what happened to his conversation skills. Maybe he left them in Florida. Maybe he and Steve were never very good at this. Maybe (good God) maybe Becca was right about them being useless at talking.

“Hanukkah starts Tuesday night,” Steve says, because he's always been bolder than Bucky, if not braver. “If you want to come over, we can light the candles together.”

“I think,” Bucky says quietly, “I think I'd like that.”

*

He finds himself at Steve's door, that first night, just before sunset. Steve looks surprised to see him there. “Oh. I'm not– set up yet. Just give me a minute, let me get it–”

Steve hurries to get the chintzy little menorah out of its plastic packaging and set up straight on the table. Then the candles don't quite fit – of course not, they never do – and Steve has to shave one down and wrap the other in foil so it fits in the cup.

Finally, they're ready. Steve passes Bucky the box of matches. He takes one out, lights it, brings it up to the shamash candle–

...and his mind goes completely blank.

He freezes. It's silent, there, in the apartment.

Then Steve, always Steve, forever Steve, says, “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam–”  


שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה׃

Bucky whispers, finishing the first blessing. He picks up the shamash and lights the candle, and sings the rest of the prayers with only one or two more hitches in his breath. He doesn't look away from the candles. He thinks about miracles, miracles, Becca and Steve and him all here and alive and–

“Thanks, Steve,” he says. He doesn't, he can't, not in front of Steve of all people he can't. “I gotta go.”

He leaves and doesn't hear what Steve says back.

*

The next night, Steve lets him in with a cocked eyebrow and a smirk, and Bucky says, “Sorry,” and Steve says, “It's fine,” and that's the end of it.

Steve has two menorahs set up on the table, and another box of candles. He explains, “I thought you might like something better than what I picked up from an endcap at the corner store.”

Bucky helps Steve get them set up, six candles in two menorahs. They light them together, singing the blessings together, voices low and sure, this time, of the words.

It's much brighter, tonight.

*

The third night, there are three menorahs on Steve's kitchen table. Bucky doesn't speak any of his suspicions out loud, but he has them.

*

The fourth night of Hanukkah, Bucky meets Steve at temple for Shabbat services, then walks with him back to his apartment. He’s not surprised in the least to see a fourth menorah set out on the table, twenty candles total.

“What are you doing, Steve?” he asks quietly. Everything about him is quiet, nowadays.

Steve shrugs unconvincingly. “I don't know, I just like the look of them.”

“You're supposed to light an extra hanukkah candle every night,” he explains, not that Steve needs convincing, “not a whole extra chanukiah.”

“Oh, is that how that works?” Steve asks, all sarcasm and attitude and _Steve_ down to his very core.

Because Steve hasn't changed either, not really – still that same angry, brave, gentle fella who can't agree when he can argue instead, who knows every word of the _shehecheyanu_ and must have searched everywhere or paid a pretty penny for a kippa that matches the one he wore in an abandoned temple in another century.

Bucky rolls his eyes to hide the way he can't quite believe Steve is real sometimes, the way his voice wants to break and his throat wants to tighten because Steve is doing something, here. Something is happening, as they progress from day to day and from night to night, lighting the candles together before breaking apart again.

“You're a jerk,” he finally manages to say, after a beat too long.

Steve nods, _of course,_ and busies himself with setting up the candles so that Bucky can't get a good look at his face.

Bucky lets him have his moment.

*

On the fifth night, there are five menorahs, and Bucky doesn't even argue.

There is also sufganiyot that Steve bought from the kosher store, leading Bucky to ask, “These from the same place as…?”

“Naw, they closed down,” Steve says mournfully through his mouthful. “There's a bar there, now. This place is newer, it's almost as good.”

“Not as good as Ma's, though,” Bucky says, and when Steve double-takes, he sighs,“Yes, I do remember my mother, Steve. Gimme a break.”

“To be fair to me, you haven't really been talking much.” Steve says, voice back to that annoyingly even tone, a failure of an attempt to hide his feelings on the matter.

“Neither have you,” Bucky says.

He leaves.

*

The sixth night, he brings latkes from the kosher deli as an apology. There are, as expected, six menorahs.

*

On the seventh night, Bucky stares at the candles for a long time.

He wonders how he can miss New York so much when he's away, but not know how to navigate it when he's here. How he can spend a whole summer thinking about what Steve means, and what Steve means _to him_ , and yet feel so damn awkward and out of sorts the moment Steve is actually, physically within reach.

Steve takes a sharp breath in, like he does when he's about to be brave. And then he breaks his silence.

“They woke me up out of the ice and brought me a priest. They thought I'd want to–” he makes a gesture with his hand, mimicking taking communion “–you know, all that. I told them the priests would kick me out of church for arguing with them, so if it's all the same, I'll pass.”

Steve shakes his head. He hasn't looked at Bucky once since opening his mouth, and continues not looking. “I didn't tell them the rabbis used to feed me lunch for asking the same questions. Wasn't something I wanted _them_ to– to have. I guess it’s good I didn’t say anything, since they all turned out to be Hydra. But I– I missed this. I missed– all of this.”

Bucky nods. They keep their eyes on the candles, watching them burn and drip down to the tabletop, the foil Steve placed carefully underneath each menorah catching the wax and keeping it from reaching the wood.

“Hydra took away everything,” Bucky says quietly, when the candles have burned down another half an inch. “But every time they woke me up, they had to tell me it was Sunday. I'd work the mission for six days and then if they didn't– if they didn't make me forget again– I'd just… stop. I didn’t even know why.”

“Your ma would be proud of you,” Steve says quietly, after a long pause.

Bucky snorts. “What, for keeping Shabbat?”

“No,” Steve says. He looks over at Bucky, then. His eyes shine in the candlelight. “For staying alive.”

Bucky looks back at Steve for a long, long moment. He steps closer. He takes his hand.

He says, “I’m glad I did.”

He thinks it might be the truth.

*

On the eighth night there are eight menorahs, and the newest one is so intimately familiar it makes Bucky stop dead in the kitchen doorway the moment he catches sight of it. It's the Barnes family menorah, the one his father gave his mother as a wedding gift, the one that he lit once a year his whole, entire life.

“Becca had it in storage,” Steve explains. “You know you can get overnight package delivery from anywhere in the country, now?”

“Sure,” Bucky says distractedly. He can't tear his eyes away from the burnished brass, the way it slots into his mind like a puzzle piece, like a shape that was missing, and the missing piece wasn't the menorah, the missing piece was–

Steve quietly starts filling the candle cups of all the various menorahs, giving him a moment as he stares, and breathes, and pulls himself together.

In all, there are seventy-two candles, and it takes them nearly ten minutes to light them all, and the light, at the end, isn't blinding – but it feels that way, somehow.

Bucky looks at Steve, and in the flickering glow the awkwardness drops away. The uncertainty drops away. The fear and indecision and– all of it, all of it drops away and what's left is as bright and shining as the candles in front of them

“Steve?” he asks.

Steve looks up at him, and – yes. “Yeah?”

Bucky asks, “Do you remember when we were, God I don't know where, and we found that abandoned shul and– and the grave?”

Steve's face goes serious; Bucky already misses the contentment it replaced. “Yeah, Buck, I remember.”

Bucky asks, “You remember when I– after we got back to London, when I fucked my hand up punching the wall, you remember what you said?”

Steve nods. “Yes.”

Bucky asks, “Did you mean it, back then?”

Steve’s lips tighten. He nods again. “Yes.”

And finally, Bucky asks, “Do you– do you think someday you might–”

“You're such an asshole,” Steve interrupts, voice hot and eyes on fire. “I loved you back then and I love you right now and I'll love you– is _that_ why you've been so distant? Oi gevult, Buck, I swear to God I could strangle you sometimes–”

And then Steve wraps his arms around him and pulls him close and presses kisses onto his cheeks, his forehead, his beard, his lips, and Bucky kisses back because how could he _not_ , how could he not when he has loved Steve since before he can remember and loved Steve when he couldn’t remember and loved Steve when he was punching him and when he was pulling him from the water and when he was walking away from him and when he was a thousand miles away from him and when he was sitting right next to him.

There were no more miracles when the temple fell, but somehow, somehow, somehow this one slipped through. They’re alive and together, they have a temple down the block and Becca just a phone call away and the Barnes family menorah and whether they made the miracle or the miracle made itself doesn’t matter, because here they are.

Here they are.

*

Bucky wakes up.

Steve is laying next to him in bed, covers kicked to the waist, pressed just close enough that only their fingers are touching. The sun is shining through the windows, and the apartment still smells faintly of beeswax and candle smoke and the soot stain now gracing Steve's living room ceiling.

Bucky takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and says,

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם  
  
שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה. רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ  


*

_I thank you, living and enduring king, for You have graciously returned my soul within me. Great is your faithfulness._

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! FYI I'm on the tunglr, such as it is, at [jhscdood.tumblr.com](http://jhscdood.tumblr.com).


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